The railway is 393 kilometres (244 mi) in length and connects Qingdao, on the Jiaozhou Bay, and Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong.

Adolph von Hansemann and other German financiers funded construction of the railway, then known as Schantung Eisenbahn Gesellschaft (Shantung Railway Company), which began September 23, 1899, and was completed in 1904.

As the Qingdao–Jinan railway could be used to transport a large number of soldiers through the mountainous countryside of the Shandong Peninsula, it was of great military significance during the Warlord Era (1916–1928) and Nanjing decade (1928–1937) of China, as various warlords used it in their conflicts.

Liu's troops managed to beat off the attacks, forcing Han to resort to the region's road network (which was of bad quality at the time) to move his army, significantly prolonging the war.

[12] It was originally opened by the German-owned Shantung Railway Company, and after the Germans were defeated in China by the Japanese during the First World War, it passed to Chinese control as the Jiaoji Railway Company.