Ausbesserungswerk Opladen, Railway repair workshop in Leverkusen, Germany

Ausbesserungswerk Opladen is a former railway repair facility in the Opladen district of Leverkusen, made up of locomotive halls, wagon workshops, a forge, and administrative buildings. The site is divided into clearly separate zones that still reflect the layout of a large working industrial complex.

The Königliche Eisenbahndirektion Elberfeld chose Opladen for its own main locomotive repair workshop after capacities at Witten proved insufficient, and the town council offered land cheaply. Built between Opladen and Quettingen, it opened on 1 November 1903 with about 200 workers. A wagon workshop followed in 1907, and the workforce passed 2,000 by the end of that decade. Renamed RAW Opladen in 1922, it became the central electric locomotive workshop for northern Germany from 1959.

The name Opladen became tied to railway work: generations of families in the district earned their living here, and the town's population more than doubled in the first decade of the 20th century after the works opened. During both world wars women, prisoners of war and forced labourers were brought in to keep repairs running.

The site is being gradually transformed as part of the New Railway City Opladen project, so some areas may be under development during a visit. It is worth checking in advance which parts are open to the public before heading there.

A bombing raid on December 28, 1944 killed 234 people on the site, including 104 foreign workers who had no access to the air raid shelters. This event is still part of local memory and is not forgotten by the surrounding community.