The eastern part of the yard is also close to this river, which runs from the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge), or its former bed, making it prone to flooding.

The yard is officially located 230 metres from the end of the Berlin–Dresden railway, which extends in the city from its centre to the Elbe bridge in Niederwartha and Cossebaude.

The passenger traffic to and from the northwest, for example Dresden S-Bahn services, mainly use the Leipzig line via Pieschen and Dresden-Neustadt station.

Immediately east of the Dresden-Friedrichstadt yard, the Berlin–Dresden railway meets the inner-city link between the neighbouring stations of Dresden Hauptbahnhof and Dresden-Neustadt at a wye junction.

To the west of the station, a short line branches to the north to the river port of Alberthafen and is used exclusively for the transport of goods.

North of the station, the Waltherstraße stop is served by bus route 94, which runs between Postplatz and Niederwartha, and by tram line 1 from Leutewitz to Prohlis.

Before the building of the first station in Friedrichstadt, it was the location of the powder magazines of the Saxon Army; they were relocated with the concentration of the barracks of Dresden in Albertstadt on the edge of the Prießnitz flood plain.

As a result, important industrial companies, such as the sewing machine manufacturer, Seidel & Naumann, the Dresden flour mill, the Yenidze cigarette factory and the municipal slaughterhouse gradually settled there.

A year later, the section of the line between Elsterwerda and Dresden, which was largely located in Saxony, was sold to the Royal Saxon State Railways, which operated the station from 1 April 1888.

At about the same time as the closure of the Berliner Bahnhof, the Dresden-Friedrichstadt marshalling yard was completed immediately south of it and it went into service on 1 May 1894.

In order to provide material for it—a total of 1,55 million cubic metres was needed—the neighbouring basin of the river port of Alberthafen and the trough in the Ostragehege were excavated at the same time.

[8] In addition Deutsche Reichsbahn built several tracks covered by coarse-grained sand to stop wagons that had got out of control.

The sports grounds of ESV Dresden was opened in February 1934, after several months of construction, in the area of the Reichsbahn locomotive depot on the bank of the Weißeritz (which has been called Emerich-Ambros-Ufer since 1945).

At that time it consisted of a shooting range, a bowling alley, a grass field for fistball, a hard court for football and a running track.

As the stations further west of the city were already heavily damaged, Deutsche Reichsbahn routed a large part of the traffic in the Leipzig–Berlin–Dresden area via Dresden-Friedrichstadt from 1944.

On 7 October 1944, 30 bombers of the USAAF attacked Dresden, including Dresden-Friedrichstadt yard, with about 80 tons of explosive bombs as a substitute for their primary target of the hydrogenation plant of Sudetenländische Treibstoffwerke AG (Sutag) at Záluží (Maltheuern) in Litvínov.

In addition to the main targets, to which the Dresden-Friedrichstadt marshalling yard and the neighbouring locomotive depot as well as several armaments factories belonged, the Friedrichstädt hospital and surrounding quarters were also hit.

[8] The cable-haulage system had suffered severe damage in the war and was sent to the Soviet Union as reparations; its whereabouts are unknown.

At the end of 1946, the traffic had returned to about half of the 1938 level and the cable-haulage system was put back into operation on 1 December 1947.

In the following decade, Deutsche Reichsbahn introduced hydraulic beam retarders and commenced electric train operations towards Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz); in addition, the use of portable radio telephones began.

Point heaters were introduced in 1971 and the building of several additional tracks further increased the yard's capacity, so that up to 5,000 freight wagons per day could be handled.

[8] The social facilities for the railway employees at this time included, inter alia, an outpatient clinic on Emerich-Ambros-Ufer and a company kindergarten.

This measure, which was heavily subsidised by the Free State of Saxony, effectively reduced traffic on federal highway 170.

[16] The new transhipment station in Dresden-Friedrichstadt took over the handling of combined transport in Dresden from the Dresden-Neustadt freight yard on 2 November 2005.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, Deutsche Bahn Intended to completely shut down the Dresden-Friedrichstadt marshalling yard in 2011,[17] but the closure was postponed indefinitely in January 2011.

In December 2014, it was announced that the station would lose its train formation function and henceforth be operated as a "satellite with shunting".

In addition, among other things, a forge, large warehouses and several service, storage and administration buildings were built.

[20] In the first years after commissioning, all standard and narrow-gauge locomotives based in Dresden and the surrounding area, as well as all types of wagons, were repaired.

The vehicle maintenance therefore ran down in the early 1990s and the repair shop was demolished in the late 1990s in favour of the planned freight transport centre.

[21] Since the facilities on the former Peterstraße could not be expand, a new railway depot was established in 1935 on the opposite, northern side of the marshalling yard on Hamburger Straße.