The station is located in the network of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar (Rhine-Neckar transport association, VRN) and belongs to fare zone 998.

After passenger services were abandoned at the station, it functioned exclusively as a depot for railway operations and as a freight yard.

The Wieslauter Railway branches off parallel to this, but it runs down a slope to the lower valley of the Lauter.

Due to its importance for the nearby municipality of Hinterweidenthal, the station was designated as Hinterweidenthal-Kaltenbach.

On the Bavarian side, there were plans for a line from Wissembourg (which had been part of Germany since 1870 and called Weißenburg) via Dahn and Lemberg to Pirmasens.

The station in Kaltenbach was found to be unsuitable for a junction because of its unfavourable topographical situation and as a result a new station was built two kilometres east of it, originally under the name of Kaltenbach Ost (east) at the junction to the branch line.

The excursion train which ran on Sundays and public holidays, the Bundenthaler, remained as a concession to the local population who had vehemently protested against the decommissioning for the time being.

[14][15] In the course of the gradual dissolution of the railway division of Mainz from 1 August 1971, its counterpart in Saarbrücken took responsibility for the station.

However, Hinterweidenthal Ost station is not served except during the times when the Wieslauter Railway operates.

In 2000, the station became part of the Westpfalz-Verkehrsverbund (Western Palatinate transport association, WVV) along with the rest of the Western Palatinate; in addition, the tariff of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar (Rhine-Neckar transport association, VRN) was extended to the Dahn/Hauenstein/Hinterweidenthal area.

Two turnouts in the station were renewed in October 2003; consequently rail traffic on the Wilgartswiesen–Münchweiler section was blockaded during this work.

[24] Due to its function as a railway junction, it was also a stop for express trains on the main line.

In the first years after the reactivation of passenger services on the Wieslauter Railway on Sundays and public holidays in 1997, two pairs of trains operated, which were later increased to four.

[30] Trains of the Landau–Rohrbach railway only stop at the station at times when services run on the branch line.

The only exceptions were the tanker trains to the Hinterweidenthal tank farm, which ran from Karlsruhe via Landau.

[13] From the end of the 1980s, the local railway was increasingly rarely served and freight trains now run only to Hinterweidenthal Ort.