It was of built by the Rhenish Railway Company (German: Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, RhE) and opened for freight on 23 December 1867 and for passenger traffic on 1 January 1868.

Option B was planned as a line past Dorenburg castle (to the north of Grefrath) towards Hinsbeck and southeast of Leuth towards Kaldenkirchen.

The realised route corresponded to the proposed option C. There were also considerations for a short time of building a branch line from Lobberich via Boisheim to Waldniel.

[3] Operations were initially carried out with locomotive-hauled trains, but from the early 1960s, as a result of increasing motorisation, services were operated by the so-called "saviour of branch lines", Uerdingen railbuses (class VT 95), which were eventually replaced by battery powered railcars of class 515.

After the abandonment of passenger services on the entire route on 22 May 1982 and the abandonment of freight between Kempen and Grefrath on 28 May 1983, there was still thriving freight traffic on the remaining Grefrath–Kaldenkirchen section (including Lobberich), but it was strongly restricted in the early 1990s and it was completely stopped on 31 December 1999.