Due to the construction of the Leipzig main station in 1902 the ‘Eisenbahnwerk Leipzig II’ had to be relocated and the area in Engelsdorf was chosen for the new railway workshop. It was continuously expanded in the following years by investments by the Reichsbahn. In 1920 the boiler wrought got modernized by new machines which were powered by electricity and compressed air. In Engelsdorf a lot of houses were built to accommodate the workers in the workshop while many streets were renovated and enlarged. Due to the modernization and world economic crisis in the 1920s, a lot of workers were dismissed. During the 1930s the workshop was massively modernized again and a new boiler wrought was built in the area. A lot of jobs were created during this time and more and more workers were employed in the workshop. About 85% of the RAW were destroyed by Allied Forces with bombs in April 1945.
The reconstruction of the workshop started already in the middle of 1945. The transfer platform could be moved again in September 1945 which was done manually by 40 people. In the following years the workshop was rebuilt step by step and finally was fully operational again. In 1967 the last steam locomotive was repaired and the workshop’s focus was shifted to the repair and construction of freight wagons.
The beginning of the end took place in 1990 with the takeover of the Reichsbahn by the Westdeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft. 600 workers were dismissed instantly in 1990, 483 were dismissed in 1993 and 500 in 1994. A longterm plan was made to close the workshop in 1997 but wouldn’t take place. A Swedish investment group bought it in 2001 and formed the ‘LRS Leipzig Rail Service GmbH’ while proving a workplace for the remaining 151 workers. Nowadays, about the half of the area which isn’t used by LRS is abandoned and left to decay.
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