Once the track has returned to street level, it passes across a "bridge to nowhere” over the unfinished Karlsruhe Nordtangente (north tangent) highway.

Shortly after it crosses the Pfinz flood relief canal (Pfinz-Entlastungskanal) it leaves the route of the Hardt line to run further west through the centre of Leopoldshafen.

After that, the line ran on the far eastern edge of Hochstetten to pass through the Hardt forest, where the route can be made out again for a few kilometres to Graben-Neudorf station.

Source: German railway atlas[1] Construction of the Baden Mainline (Badische Hauptbahn) started in 1840 from Mannheim, running via Heidelberg to Karlsruhe, and it was extended to Basel by 1855.

However, the indirect route via Heidelberg bypassed part of the natural catchment area of Mannheim which was located close to the Rhine, including towns such as Schwetzingen and Hockenheim.

This led to a vigorous debate about the southern part of a proposed line from Mannheim to Karlsruhe close to the Rhine: under the plan, the railway would run via Linkenheim, Eggenstein and Neureut to Mühlburger Tor and from there run together with the Maxau Railway to Karlsruhe station.

The Grand Duke of Baden, Frederick I approved the building of this route despite efforts to have the line run to the east of Karlsruhe.

In 1900, it was decided to relocate Karlsruhe Central Station, which was then in the centre of the city at Ettlinger Tor to the then southern suburbs.

This project, which was completed in 1913, involved relocating the route of the Hardt Railway within the city of Karlsruhe and the then independent municipality of Neureut.

A route had been reserved for this purpose east of the Hardt Railway, running to the Neureut development area.

A service ran as line A on the tracks of the Hardt Railway from Welschneureuter Straße station to the temporary terminus at Neureut Kirchfeld.

On 2 July 1982, the city of Karlsruhe and the municipalities of Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen and Linkenheim-Hochstetten signed an agreement which provided for the extension of the Hardt Railway as far as Hochstetten.

In 1987 and 1988, several platforms on the Hardt Railway were raised to 38 centimetres to give passengers a less difficult entry into the vehicles and thus accelerate boarding.

A steam locomotive was parked for a long time on the old route of the Hardt railway in Leopoldshafen.

In 1997, the section between Neureut-Kirchfeld station and the bridge over the highway 36 was duplicated and since then only about 500 metres of the line between Neureut and Eggenstein is single-track.

In recent times there have been two fatal accidents on the Hardt Railway: at the end of 2003, a student was killed at Leopoldshafen Viermorgen and only a half year later there was a similar incident at Linkenheim Schulzentrum.

Attempts to have the Hardt Railway extended through the two Dettenheim districts of Liedolsheim and Rußheim to Philippsburg have not yet been implemented and it is unclear whether the extension will ever be realised.

For a long time, according to the long-time chairman of the AVG Dieter Ludwig, there have only been "rough drawings with a pen."

Several years ago there were some preliminary investigations, which produced two options: both would leave the existing line just before the Hochstetten Altenheim stop and run straight ahead for about five hundred metres.

In both options the line would run through Rußheim to end at Philippsburg station on the Bruhrain Railway.