More concrete plans were published on 5 March 1872 for a line from Bünde to Rahden, branching off the Löhne–Rheine railway, which was opened on 21 November 1855.

[2] But planning for a single-track branch line from Bünde to Rahden was finally approved by the Prussian minister for public works in 1892.

Five years later, on 22 February 1887, ground was broken and, on 30 September 1899, the first services were operated on the railway by two special trains, which could be used free of charge.

From January 1950 express trains from Bremerhaven-Lehe to Frankfurt via Bremen, Herford, Paderborn, Korbach and Marburg used this route.

On 1 June 1994, the last remaining pair of trains ran on the Bielefeld–Bassum–Bremen route and therefore all passenger traffic ended between Rahden and Bassum.

DB Cargo has continued to operate traffic on the section of the line from Diepholz via Sulingen to Barenburg for ExxonMobil.

[3] A bottleneck in the federal trunk road network (B61) was eliminated at the existing railway overpass at Bassum with the partial removal of the embankment in the autumn of 2009.

Nevertheless, the Verein Aktionsbündnis Eisenbahnstrecke Bassum-Bünde, founded in 2010, has submitted a plan for the reactivation of the line.

[6] Passenger services on the Bünde–Rahden section are now operated as part of Deutsche Bahn’s Münster-Ostwestfalen (MOW) regional network, based in Münster.