Oslo Central Station

The year after the western station opened, in 1873, the Norwegian legislature, the Storting, decided to build a new railway from Kornsjø at the Swedish border through Østfold to Oslo, the Smaalenene Line (now the Østfold Line). Traffic at the station was expected to explode due to this railway and it was decided that a new station had to be built. The engineers within NSB wanted to locate this new station west of the river Akerselva, between Jernbanetorget and Bjørvika. But a conflict arose between Carl Abraham Pihl, who was director of NSB at the time, and the City of Oslo. While Pihl wanted a separate station for the Smaalenene Line, the city wanted to concentrate the stations in one place in Oslo. The engineers insisted on moving the station closer to the city. The architect Georg Andreas Bull drafted four plans for a new station with nine tracks over the river Akerselva. In 1878 the legislature decided to build the smallest suggested station?with only seven tracks over the river, claiming that the station was oversized. Oslo East Station (Oslo Østbanestasjon , Oslo Ø ) opened in 1882.