Immediately afterwards Mecklenburg-Schwerin began work on a link from Hagenow to Schwerin, which was opened on 1 May 1847.

The station was built in the southeast of Rostock near the old Steintor gate and the Warnow river.

Initially, two pairs of trains a day ran between Rostock and Hagenow, stopping in Schwaan, Bützow, Blankenberg, Kleinen and Schwerin.

Three pairs of trains ran between Wismar and Kleinen and between Bützow and Güstrow as feeder services.

After a connection was opened from the Stralsund line to the Hauptbahnhof in 1905, the old Friedrich Franz station became a freight yard only.

Also significant for the line was the reconstruction of the Warnemünde station in 1903 and the establishment of a direct train ferry service to Gedser, Denmark.

Between Bad Kleinen and Bützow there was one D-Zug and one ordinary express train (with through coaches to Rostock) on the Hamburg–Stettin route.

The line became ever more important in the following decades, both for passenger and freight transport (especially to the port of Rostock).

Summer services in the 1980s consisted of up to ten pairs of express trains between Rostock and Magdeburg and usually continuing to Leipzig or Erfurt.

As a result of the oil crisis in the 1970s, East German Railways electrified several lines in the early 1980s.

The line was modernised for maximum speeds of up to 160 km/h as part of German Unity Transport Project No.

Between Bützow and Bad Kleinen Regional-Express services also operate, every two hours, on the Szczecin–Lubeck route, stopping in Blankenberg and Ventschow.

With the timetable change in December 2008, the Bad Kleinen station was largely abandoned as an IC stop.