Nordstemmen station is located on the Hanover–Göttingen railway and the Hildesheim–Löhne railway in the town of Nordstemmen in the German state of Lower Saxony. The station building was built by Conrad Wilhelm Hase (1853–1854), but it has not been used by Deutsche Bundesbahn or Deutsche Bahn since 1977. Since 2011, the Hildesheim contractor Dirk Bettels has tried in vain to acquire and rehabilitate the grade II heritage-listed station building with public funds. Construction work begun by Dirk Bettels was discontinued at the end of March 2013 because no contract had been signed by Deutsche Bahn. Location The station is on the Hanover–Göttingen railway and the Hildesheim–Löhne railway, which share the same route between Nordstemmen and Elze. The Hanoverian Southern Railway was opened for traffic from Hanover via Nordstemmen to Alfeld from 1 May 1853 and the line from Nordstemmen to Hildesheim was opened by the Royal Hanoverian State Railways on 15 September 1853. After the opening of the Weser Railway from Elze to Löhne by the Hanover-Altenbeken Railway Company (Hannover-Altenbekener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, HAE) for freight on 19 May 1875 and for passenger traffic on 30 June 1875, there were through trains on the Hildesheim–Hameln–Löhne route. The HAE built a second track between Elze and Hildesheim to handle the additional traffic. On 1 January 1880, this line was nationalised by the Prussian government, which had taken over the Hanoverian State Railways after the War of 1866. A railway ran from Nordstemmen station to Rössing and through the town of Lauenstadt to the Calenberg mill in Schulenburg. The Nordstemmen sugar mill founded in 1865 was also connected by its own siding to Nordstemmen station. In 1896, there was a plan for the building of a 22.3 km long metre-gauge railway from Nordstemmen via Barnten, Schulenburg, Adensen, Hallerburg, Alferde, Eldagsen and Alvesrode to Springe, which would serve both passenger and freight transport. The narrow-gauge railway was to carry 100,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight (including sugar beet for the Nordstemmen sugar mill). The construction of the narrow-gauge railway failed because of the opposition of the town of Eldagsen and its farmers who wanted no railway in their town. Since the opening of the Hanover–Würzburg high-speed railway, on a different route, in 1991, through passenger traffic has greatly reduced at Nordstemmen station. Today, hourly trains are operated on the line between Hanover and Göttingen by metronom (ME), and apart from freight trains, there are