Even after German reunification in 1989/90, the line has not been able to regain its former importance, especially as government policy gave preference to the extensive upgrade of the parallel Großheringen–Saalfeld railway.

Investors wanted to wait to see if the LDE and its Leipzig–Dresden railway would succeed and the Saxon state gave the project little support; only surveys of route for the line were carried out 1837.

A treaty covering the route of the line and the Hof border station was signed between the three states of Saxony, Saxe-Altenburg and Bavaria on 14 January 1841.

[3] Railway construction began on 1 July 1841 under the leadership of Karl Theodor Kunz, and initially work was carried out on the easily built section of the line from Leipzig to Reichenbach.

Since no experience had been acquired in building such large bridges, the two viaducts were ultimately twice as expensive as originally planned.

On 21 September 1846, the Saxon-Bavarian Railway Company had to cease financing the construction work and asked the Kingdom of Saxony for help.

On 1 April 1847, the Kingdom of Saxony purchased the company and operated it as the Saxon-Bavarian State Railways (Sächsisch-Bayerische Staatseisenbahn).

The private railway company had begun construction work on the Plauen–Hof section to obtain further revenue to finance the expensive bridge structures as quickly as possible.

With increasing traffic, this section became congested, so from 1885 onwards a new track was laid parallel to the two existing ones and opened on the 19 May of the following year.

Thus, although some stations in the southern section of the line became the target of air raids in 1944, in contrast to other routes, largely scheduled operations continued until 1945.

[7] After the Second World War, no trains initially operated across the line of demarcation between the Russian and the American occupation zones at Gutenfürst.

[13] The renovation of the Altenburg–Paditz section, which is about four kilometers long, was completed on 25 November 2013 after more than two years of construction; this work included the restoration of operations on two tracks.

From 1884 onwards the community of Plauen sent a petition to the Saxon Landtag (parliament) every year, but the request was not implemented.

[16] At the beginning of the 1990s, there were again discussions on the construction of a new route between Weischlitz on the Plauen–Cheb railway and Feilitzsch, which would have shortened the Plauen–Hof section from 49 to no more than 32 kilometres.

Because of the high costs and the routing of interregional long-distance traffic between Berlin and Munich via the Großheringen–Saalfeld railway, the projection has not been implemented.

One track of line 6362 between Connewitz and Gaschwitz was dismantled to make space for the Markkleeberg Nord platform.

In addition to this, extensive work had to be carried out on the Göltzsch Viaduct and several road bridges with too little clearance for electrification were replaced.

[20] The Leipzig Bayerischer Bahnhof–Werdau wye section has been served by services on lines S5 and S5X of the S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland since 15 December 2013.

The route starts at the Bayerischen Bahnhof (Bavarian station) in Leipzig, where it connects to the City Tunnel.

These have been served since 15 December 2013 at half-hour intervals in both directions by services on line S3 of the S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland between Halle and Geithain.

At this time, the town experienced enormous population growth due to the opening of a brown coal mine.

The station is the last stop in Saxony in the fare zone of the Mitteldeutscher Verkehrsverbund (middle German transport association).

Since a direct extension to the south was not possible with the technology then available, trains, after reversing, originally continued of a line that bypassed the town to the east.

Since the dead-end station on today's Fabrikstraße became more and more of a problem for rail operations, planning for a change of route commenced in 1871.

In addition, it is the last station in the area with fares set by the Mitteldeutscher Verkehrsverbund (central Germany transport association).

It is part of the Saxon-Franconian trunk line (Sachsen-Franken-Magistrale) and is included in the plans for the Mid-Germany Railway (Mitte-Deutschland-Verbindung).

Although the line to Greiz was closed in 1999, the station did not completely lose its importance as the Vogtlandbahn (now Die Länderbahn) opened its central repair shop here in 2000.

A large station reconstruction approved in 1913 could not be fully realised as a result the outbreak of the First World War and later by the lack of money.

At the end of the Second World War, the station was heavily damaged by air raids, so that the installations were strongly characterised by numerous provisional arrangements until the 1970s.

From 1886, a single-storey entrance building, a roundhouse with coal-loading facilities (Heizhaus) and a coal shed were built.