Instead, the line took a long detour via Nördlingen through the Nordlinger Ries depression, where only slight gradients had to be overcome.

An intended side effect of this route was the possibility of a direct connection to the Württemberg railway network, which was realised in 1863 with the opening of the Stuttgart–Nördlingen line.

A committee made up of municipalities and companies initially unsuccessfully campaigned for the Bavarian state government to build the connection.

It was only when the Munich-Treuchtlingen and Augsburg-Nördlingen-Nürnberg lines reached the limits of their capacity that the Bavarian state government took up the old plans to cross the Alb again.

In contrast to the projects from the 1830s, it was now possible to dispense with the costly steep ramps with rope haulage that were designed at the time.

On 11 October 1901, the Bavarian parliament decided to build the Donauwörth–Treuchtlingen line, after land acquisition had begun ten years previously.

As part of the railway axis between Berlin and Rome, Deutsche Reichsbahn began electrification in 1934, which was completed on 5 April 1935.

On 21 February 1945, more than 300 people died when there was a direct hit on the Treuchtlingen platform underpass, which served as a shelter.

[5] As part of a pilot project in the 1970s, almost all intermediate stops were abandoned and instead a bus route was established to serve the localities.

It branches off to the right of the Augsburg–Nördlingen railway, leaves Donauwörth in a northerly direction, crosses the Wörnitz valley, the former route of the line to Nördlingen and federal highway 25 that runs through the valley, and then climbs several kilometres to the slope above the Ellerbach on the Monheimer Alb range of the Franconian Alb.

The summer timetable of 1939 listed only four local passenger train pairs between Donauwörth and Treuchtlingen, which needed a little less than 40 minutes for the line.

Since the timetable change in December 2022, these two-hourly trains have been extended to the Würzburg–Treuchtlingen–Donauwörth–Augsburg–Munich route and operated RE 80 by Go Ahead Bayern.