The section to Nördlingen, together with the Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt–Nördlingen railway, is part of a direct Donauwörth–Aalen connection and diversion route from Munich to Stuttgart.

A few years later, however, King Ludwig I announced the construction of a state railway and the company realised that the difficult geological conditions between Donauwörth and Treuchtlingen (Franconian Jura) made it impossible to build and operate a railway line there economically.

As a result, the Bavarian government avoided the problem of the Franconian Jura by routing the Ludwig South-North Railway via the Nördlinger Ries.

Opening dates were as follows:[2] During the construction of the Danube Valley Railway from Ingolstadt to Neuoffingen, the line in Donauwörth was extensively rerouted in 1877.

Construction work to electrify the line from Augsburg to Donauwörth and on to Nuremberg via Treuchtlingen began in 1933 and was completed on 10 May 1935.

[5] In November 2018, the construction of a third track for the section between Augsburg and Donauwörth was classified as an "urgent need" in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030.

With the timetable change in December 2022, the operation of local passenger transport began with the simultaneous elimination of stops at Harburg (Schwab) station, where the dismantling of the platforms was planned for early 2023.

[8] The Augsburg–Donauwörth section, which was upgraded in the late 1970s for a line speed of 200 km/h, is regularly used by DB and private companies as a test track for new rail transport technologies.

On 17 October 1984, a DB train hauled by locomotive 120 001 set a new world record for three-phase vehicles at 265 km/h on a test run with three carriages (load: around 250 t).

In the urban area of Augsburg, the older line was retained to connect to the track construction yard.

After the station, the line ran through a short tunnel and then made a wide arc westwards.

After an invitation to tender as part of the so-called E-Netz Augsburg, regional trains were operated by DB Regio as the "Fugger Express" on the Munich–Treuchtlingen, Munich–Donauwörth and Donauwörth–Nördlingen–Aalen lines from 2009.

In December 2022, Go-Ahead Bayern took over lot 1 of the Augsburg network as the successor to the Fugger Express.