The Duchy of Brunswick had privatised its former state railways in 1870 and the BME and the BPE had acquired shares.

Even before the completion of the Upper Ruhr Valley Railway in 1873, construction work began in 1872 to close the last gap in a private rail network from the Rhine to the Spree.

It was not until 1900, when traffic had grown substantially, that a pair of Durchgangszug (D-Zug, “corridor express train”) was established between Berlin and Cologne.

A connecting curve was built in Nörde that allowed trains to be diverted by the Holzminden–Nörde–Altenbeken (–Soest route).

After the Second World War, the section from Holzminden to Wehrden had a final period of prosperity as the Weser bridge on the Altenbeken–Kreiensen railway at Corvey had been destroyed.

It was frequently used until the early 1990s for the transfer of vehicles and tanks of the NATO forces.

The Bahnflächenentwicklungsgesellschaft (“railway land development company”) NRW (BEG), a joint venture of North Rhine-Westphalia and Deutsche Bahn plans, however, the partial removal of the disused line and its conversion into a cycle path.