The now 53 km-long standard gauge route passes through a sparsely populated rural landscape.

It was built throughout as a single track, but because of its strategic importance as an east–west connection and a northern bypass of Hamburg, its stations were given long passing loops.

Business closures and modal shifts ended these traffic flows in the 1970s.

No money was available for necessary route reconstruction and the tracks were still laid in a gravel bed.

For some time the AKN still ran freight from Alveslohe via Ulzburg to Henstedt.

Passenger services were resumed in 1992, initially with only a few trains daily, and the line was incorporated in the HVV.

Due to the scrapping of the pre-war railcars from 1961, new and used Uerdingen railbuses were purchased.

In order to rationalise vehicle classes, the MAN railbuses were transferred to the Alster Northern Railway in 1968 .