The route runs parallel to the A 66 through Nordenstadt on the northern edge of Lucius D. Clay Kaserne (a U.S. base formerly called the Wiesbaden Army Airfield) to Erbenheim.

[4] The (ultimately realised) right bank route between Cologne and Frankfurt along the A 3 initially provided for a connection from Niedernhausen to Wiesbaden Central Station.

A variant developed at this time envisaged, for example, the building of a station between Bierstadt and Erbenheim, east of the settlement of Hainerberg.

DB then distanced itself from such variations, looking for geologically favourable solutions, even if they required trains to reverse in the central station.

[3] From a variety of route options, three were examined closely:[3] In a summit meeting between DB, the state of Hesse and the Wiesbaden city council, the Hainerberg variant was discarded, while DB agreed to develop the other two variants equally and bring them into the regional planning process.

As part of the process the "Best Wiesbaden Solution" was ultimately rejected due to the unacceptable time and effort required for its planning and for architectural and geological reasons.

The city of Wiesbaden finally developed a so-called "optimised spatial route" (optimierte Raumordnungstrasse) with a triangle: in addition to the new line a branch would run to the southwest with provision for a connecting link to the southeast, which would be included in the regional planning and planning approval processes.

[7] During the planning, the construction of a previously agreed by-pass road around Wallau was considered for inclusion in the project.

[10] In the course of the route planning, a connecting curve between Erbenheim and Wiesbaden East, which would have run along the route of the freight rail line abandoned in 1997 and would have allowed direct operations between the high-speed line and Mainz Central Station (bypassing Wiesbaden Central Station), was not realised.

At the beginning of operations in December 2002, eight pairs of ICE services per day ran between Wiesbaden and Mainz, in the 2005 timetable it was reduced to five and from June 2006 to four.

[13] In autumn 2008, the ICE services running between Cologne and Wiesbaden were, according to Deutsche Bahn, occupied by an average of 88 passengers.

This two kilometre link would branch off near the Hofheim-Wallau autobahn junction to the southeast and connect to the high-speed line running south.

[16] The two turnouts at Breckenheim junction are each 138 m long and weigh 500 tons, allowing branching speeds of up to 160 km/h (4,000 m radius).

[8] The speed limit on the line is 40 km/h at the exit from the Wiesbaden Central Station and shortly later (at the 13.1 km mark) climbs to 100 km/h.