Therefore, it built its station next to the Dortmund KWE station, which was built at the same time by the Royal Westphalian Railway Company (Königlich-Westfälische Eisenbahn, KWE), southeast of central Dortmund on a then undeveloped area between the streets of Märkischen Straße and Voßkuhle.

The RhE built a new line from its station in Dortmund to the south in order to serve the local mines.

On 28 December 1878, the line was extended to Löttringhausen, which was connected two years to the Dortmund-Löttringhausen–Bochum-Langendreer railway (known as the Rheinischer Esel, Rhenish Ass).

Therefore, the railway was built on a slope, requiring complex engineering structures such as viaducts and tunnels, which still influence much the city in the northern districts of Wuppertal.

Economically, it could not compete in the following years with the more centrally located main line of the BME despite good gradients–the steep Erkrath-Hochdahl incline on the competing BME line could not initially be climbed by the locomotives under their own power and trains had to be hauled by a cable system.

In August 2009, this proposal was given planning approval by the government of the Düsseldorf region, but funding for it has not yet been identified.

During the widening of the A 1 autobahn to six lanes, the rail overbridge on the outskirts of Wuppertal and Schwelm was demolished and therefore the route of the line was broken.

The section from Hagen Hauptbahnhof to Dortmund Signal-Iduna-Park is used by the Volmetal-Bahn (RB 52) Regionalbahn trains running to and from Lüdenscheid on the Volme Valley Railway.