They promised economic recovery mainly due to increased freight traffic, in particular from the quarries at Solnhofen and Eichstätt and the local steelworks.

Therefore, Eichstätt, along with the other communities and businesses along the proposed route, established a committee to build the Altmühl railway, which made representations on several occasions to King Ludwig I.

The Royal Chief Engineer (königlich functionierende Oberingenieur) Balbier examined several different lines, and finally decided to follow largely the valley of the Altmühl with separate routes from Treuchtlingen to Gunzenhausen and Pleinfeld.

On 24 September 1863, the Bavarian parliament approved this plan and on 5 October 1863 King Maximilian II finally signed a law to build the line from Ingolstadt to Gunzenhausen and Pleinfeld.

[4] With increasing traffic and as a result of the Röhrmoos railway accident on 6 July 1889,[5] duplication of the line was carried out from 1889 to 1892.

[8] After completion of electrification on the Nuremberg–Augsburg line in 1935, it was decided to also electrify the Altmühl Railway to Munich.

[9] In addition to long-distance passenger, regional and freight traffic, the Munich S-Bahn also used the Petershausen–Munich section of the line.

The rest of the route is mainly operated at 160 km/h, with the maximum speed reduced only between Munich Hauptbahnhof and Obermenzing (up to 120 km/h) and in Pfaffenhofen (150 km/h).

The section between Dachau Nord and Petershausen was put into operation on 21 April 2003, and the entire route on 11 December 2005.

Since the S-Bahn and long-distance trains have been separated, a 10-minute cycle can be run to Dachau during peak hour.

This also applied to the area around the Reichertshofen curve, which, with a top speed of 120 km/h, was the slowest section of the route.

[17] Due to a lack of planning resources for the new ETCS train control system, the final upgrade was delayed indefinitely.

Without the upgrade, Deutsche Bahn would have to pay back EU funds for the entire project.

[30] The northern section was upgraded in separate sections while trains operated: In the third expert draft of the proposed German-wide clock face timetable (Deutschlandtakt), a four-track upgrade between Ingolstadt and Petershausen is assumed.

After Petershausen, the line swings into the Ilm valley and follows it with some sharper bends to Rohrbach.

From Eichstätt Bahnhof the line runs largely in the narrow Altmühl valley and as a result it is very curvy.

In order to avoid unnecessary bridges over the Altmühl the river was diverted or cuttings were blown through the rocks.

An exception is in the Esslingerberg tunnel, which was completely refurbished up until early 2006 for €19 million including the installation of slab track.

The line has an hourly Regionalbahn service on the Munich–Ingolstadt–Treuchtlingen route, which is extended to Nuremberg at two-hourly intervals.

Extra Regionalbahn services of the Bayerische Regiobahn (BRB) operate during peak hours between Ingolstadt and Eichstätt.

The northern section of the line was formerly of great importance for long-distance traffic, but since 27 May 2006 all long distance services have run on the Nuremberg–Ingolstadt high-speed railway.