It was built by the Gotthard Railway Company (Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft, GB) on 20 December 1874 as part of the line through the Ticino valley.

The construction of the valley floors in the Canton of Ticino progressed considerably faster than the complicated main line in the Alpine region.

The concession for the Gotthard Railway included in Sopraceneri, among other things, a branch line through the Magadino plain to Locarno, which was completed after a short construction period at the end of 1874.

Under the SBB, the line was electrified with single-phase alternating current (15 Kilovolt, 16⅔ Hertz) and electrical operations started on 15 May 1936.

While the fast InterCity connections (IC/ICN) and the cross-border EuroCity trains (EC/CIS)—the so-called "high-quality" passenger services—are reserved for the main line to Lugano–Chiasso, Locarno has an hourly InterRegio (IR) service with an intermediate stop in Cadenazzo.