The Cologne freight railway bypass branches off from the station over the South Bridge; it is also used as needed by passenger trains.

With the opening of Central Station (Centralbahnhof, now called the Hauptbahnhof) in 1859, a new line was put into operation,[5] which diverged to the west from the existing line and ran to the Central Station on the inside of the inner ring of fortifications built by Prussia around the city in the 1880s.

Beginning with the 1889 renovation of the Central Station, the feeder lines were rebuilt and raised by several metres.

The intermediate tracks 2 and 3 are used mainly for long-distance passenger traffic (which does not stop at the station) on the West Rhine Railway and for out-of-service operations.

Freight trains run in the opposite direction on track 6, which has a fenced-off wooden platform, which is currently unused.

The tracks of the Vorgebirge Railway (Vorgebirgsbahn, line 18) are at the southeastern end at the station, but the closest stop is at Eifelwall about 250 metres away to the south.