As the railway was planned by the Ruhr coal district association as traffic axis (Verkehrsband) No.

The article was well received by both the city and the Königliche Eisenbahndirektion (Royal Railway division, KED, later Reichsbahndirektion) of Essen.

Under the first plans, the new connection would run from Essen Hauptbahnhof via Stoppenberg and Altenessen to the railway of the Nordstern colliery and from there via Horst, Buer and Marl to Haltern.

The western options ran through Gladbeck, the middle via Buer and the eastern via Erle and Middelich.

The planning committee finally settled on the middle option until May 1904 and submitted the proposal to the Prussian Ministry of Public Works.

[2] The Ministry rejected the proposal in a letter of 2 January 1905, referring to the Hamm–Osterfeld railway, then under construction, and the fact that its effects on traffic were awaited.

After a first submission in 1908 again met with rejection, the joint commission developed a package solution with three routes.

Along with the undisputed Buer – Marl – Haltern northern section, the project envisaged a line from Gelsenkirchener Hauptbahnhof via the stations of Gelsenkirchen-Bismarck and Westerholt to Marl and an electric rapid transit system running directly from Gelsenkirchen via Schalke to Buer.

The KED Essen used an opportunity to carry out preparatory work in the area of the connecting curve in Schalke proposed by the Ministry.

Shortly thereafter, the ministry instructed the KED to also carry out preparatory work for the section from Buer Süd to Haltern.

[2] A law adopted in 1914 approving a loan for the railway set out the basic information on it and the course described largely corresponded with the route proposed by the city of Essen in its 1903 plan.

It led to further route proposals by the city of Gladbeck and, among other things, the city administration sought a report from the traffic scientist Erich Giese, who proposed a complete reconstruction of the Gladbeck railway infrastructure without success.

In addition, Deutsche Reichsbahn planned connecting curves from Horst to Gelsenkirchen Hauptbahnhof and continuing to Bochum Präsident station.

The work was now limited to the northern section from Gelsenkirchen-Buer Nord via Marl to Haltern, a continuation to the south was now no longer provided and services would run on the existing routes via Bottrop Hbf.

[3][4][5] In 1971 a junction was built for a siding to the Chemischen Werke Hüls, today Marl Chemical Park, located north of Marl-Drewer.

In response to the ambitions of the city, the station received a comparatively large development and several pre-construction works were carried out for a planned second track.

The line initially runs parallel to the Hamm-Osterfeld railway and swings to the north after about two kilometres.

[6] The junction connects the railway of RBH Logistics (now a subsidiary of DB Cargo) to Chemiepark Marl (formerly Chemische Werke Hüls, abbreviated CHW).

The junction in Gelsenkirchen-Buer Nord station has a second track base south of the Oberhausen-Osterfeld Süd–Hamm railway.

Signal box "Buf" ("Bu" for Gelsenkirchen-Buer Nord and "f" for Fahrdienstleiter—dispatcher) was a relay interlocking of the SpDrL30 class.

As the trains usually reverse at the western platform 1 in Haltern, this eliminates the need for an at-grade crossing of the mainline tracks in the station.

Until the 1990s, individual express services also ran over the line between Münster and Duisburg (sometimes continuing to Aachen via Krefeld); these trains stopped between Haltern and GE-Buer Nord only in Marl Mitte.