supplied 17,000 tons of steel for the structure of the platform halls and the masonry consists of Elbe Sandstone. The cost of construction amounted to 18 million marks; corresponding to the equivalent of about €320 million. After more than five years of construction the whole building went into operation on 16 April 1898. At 2:08 AM the first train running as the 101 from Leipzig entered the newly opened Dresden Hauptbahnhof. As a result of the restructuring of the Dresden railway infrastructure that was carried out simultaneously, the station received better links with the lines to Leipzig, Berlin and Görlitz, which had previously been poorly connected. A new high-capacity, continuous four-track urban connecting line was opened through the new Wettiner Straße station (now Dresden Mitte station) for suburban traffic and the Maria Bridge to Dresden-Neustadt station in 1901. It was connected by rail junctions to other stations, in particular to Dresden-Friedrichstadt station. Although it was built in the heyday of luxury trains, it was almost unaffected by this phenomenon with only one branch of the Balkanzug (Balkan train) serving Dresden between 1916 and 1918. Early conversions and extensions The builders of the station assumed that the new facilities would provide sufficient capacity for many decades. In fact, the volume of traffic developed more rapidly than assumed as indicated in the table below. Since the rapid increase in traffic could barely be handled, the first expansion of facilities was planned prior to the start of the First World War. In 1914, the Saxon Parliament approved funds for the expansion, but the beginning of the war prevented its realisation. The extension could not be started until the late 1920s. One obstacle to operations until then was that it was difficult to reach the terminal tracks in the eastern precinct. As a remedy, a new through track was built through the north hall between platforms 10 and 11, replacing a luggage platform. This would henceforth be used for the passage of additional trains to the eastern precinct and for the passage of unattached locomotives and freight traffic. To take advantage of the sharp rise in through passenger traffic, the covered side hall next to the south hall was demolished, so that the two freight train tracks could be moved on to an outer track on a new concrete structure over the pavement and the released space could be used for an island platform.