The locomotive maintenance workshop “Bahnbetriebswerk Bitterfeld” was founded in the year 1872 and started to grow rapidly. This was due to the fact that the workshop was located on some very important transport routes in the eastern part of Germany. The workshops function was to repair and maintain freight trains but also locomotives which were used for passenger transport. During the early years of the GDR in the 1950s the workshop was expanded and modernized. It served as a central part for the industrial freight transport in the GDR and ensured functioning logistics for the many chemistry and other industrial plants in the area. The famous GDR locomotive V 180, which was often used to pull large freight trains, was also maintained in the workshop. During the 1970s and 1980s maintenance was slowly shifted to the new electric locomotives. After the Reichsbahn was dissolved in the 1990s the Deutsche Bahn took over the workshop and closed it almost immediately. The property has remained abandoned since then and nature is slowly taking it back, making it hard to imagine what it once looked like without all the vegetation.
