There is a reason the modern station feels improvised. In the 19th century, three different railway companies all built stations in Duisburg, none of them quite cooperating. The first opened on 9 February 1846 - the Cologne-Minden Railway, running from Cologne-Deutz toward Minden. In 1862 the Bergisch-Maerkische Railway opened its own east-west route from Dortmund and Witten, terminating in a separate building right next to the first. On 15 February 1870, the Rhenish Railway Company added a third - a short branch line from the Rheinhausen-Hochfeld train ferry across the Rhine. For a while, Duisburg passengers could choose between three stations within walking distance of each other. The Prussian state railways eventually swept them all up, demolished the three competing buildings in the 1880s, and put up a joint station on an island between the platforms. The level crossings on Muelheimer Strasse stayed in place until tracks were raised above street level around the turn of the century.

What you see today is the third great rebuild, completed in 1934 under the government architect Johannes Ziertmann of the Essen railway division. It was considered one of the most modern station buildings in Germany when it opened, comparable to its siblings in Duesseldorf, Koenigsberg, and Oberhausen - in fact, the Duisburg design was modeled directly on Koenigsberg's. The Essen sculptor Joseph Enseling carved the two figures that flank the steel ticket hall. The platform canopies, built with Vierendeel trusses, were the first all-welded steel construction of their size, structurally similar to the Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof canopies, following the conceptual precedent of the Darmstadt Hauptbahnhof canopies from before the First World War. They were striking in the way prewar modernist transport architecture often was - the kind of building that announced, clearly, that this was now the future.

Duisburg was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Germany during the Second World War. The station, sitting in the middle of the Ruhr industrial complex, took repeated damage. By the time the war ended much of the prewar interior had been destroyed: the murals in the main concourse were gone, the roof was patched, the steelwork blackened. The postwar Deutsche Bundesbahn rebuilt the station in stages, never quite restoring it to what it had been. In 1992, as part of the inauguration of the Duisburg Stadtbahn light rail system, a new northern connecting hall opened and the six platforms were lengthened over the former road underpass - the modern canopies covering this extension are easily distinguished from the older 1930s shed by their flatter, less expressive profile.

On 12 December 2008, Deutsche Bahn and North Rhine-Westphalia announced a major renovation, estimated at 60 million euros. The first phase began on 24 July 2009 - restoring the lobby and pedestrian underpass, removing the false ceilings, returning the entrance hall to something closer to its original 1930s state. It was completed on 22 December 2009. The second phase, the more expensive one - the platforms, the tracks, the dilapidated roof - was due in 2011. It did not begin. Plans drifted. Years passed. Holes opened in the train shed roof. Work on the roof and platforms finally began in August 2022, starting with tracks 12 and 13. The first two platforms were completed during 2023. The full job is expected to take several more years. Passengers in 2026 still walk under a shed that has been waiting for its repair for the better part of fifteen years.

Despite the wear, Duisburg Hbf remains essential. Long-distance ICE, IC, and EuroCity trains link it to the Netherlands, Switzerland, and across Germany. Regional services radiate out across the Ruhr and into the Rhineland: NRW-Express, Rhein-Express, Rhein-IJssel-Express toward Arnhem, Rhein-Haard-Express, half a dozen others. Two S-Bahn lines of the Rhein-Ruhr network stop here. A nearby Stadtbahn station offers trams to Muelheim an der Ruhr and Duesseldorf. The A59 motorway runs directly under the plaza in front of the main entrance. A bookshop, two bars, a barbershop, several bakers, and a small gambling arcade fill the concourse. Outside the main hall sits a hotel and the local newspaper offices. The old nightclub closed in 2006 and has been empty since. The station goes on being what it has always been: the place where everything in the western Ruhr passes through, whether anyone has finished painting it or not.