The first railway maintenance workshop with the name ‘Bahnbetriebswerk Wedau’ was built in 1878 on the railway area of Wedau. Later in 1911 the new workshop for the maintenance and repair of freight wagons was constructed in the same area. It consisted of a number of large halls, a central workshop, a boiler house, a forge and several administration buildings. It was opened on the 2nd January 1914 and got named ‘Königliche Eisenbahn-Hauptwerkstätte’. Near the main entrance, a new residential area was built to accommodate the workers of the workshop. After the first world war it was renamed to ‘Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk Wedau’. Due to the closure of many other surrounding workshops, a lot of the work got transferred to the RAW Wedau. In the following years the apprentice workshop got expanded and a paint shop as well as a carpenter’s shop was built.
During the 2nd world war the facility was bombed heavily and nearly got completely destroyed but was reconstructed soon after. The last expansion took place in the 1960s while about 2000 workers were employed in the workshop. However, due to restructuring of the Deutsche Bahn, the number of workers declined in the following decades. The first discussions of closing down the facility happened in 1983, but it was kept open till 2004, when it was finally shut down. Since then, it was left to decay but many buildings of the facility got protected by monument protection.
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