It is a regional rail hub and a former ICE stop on the Hamburg–Berlin Munich route and is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a station of category 3.

Planning of the Bamberg–Lichtenfels section of the Ludwig South-North Railway began in the summer of 1841, and work started shortly later.

The station gained new significance with the opening of the Franconian Forest Railway to Probstzella in October 1885, part of a new long-distance route to Berlin.

The number of running tracks was increased to eleven, with 17 signalman's posts replaced by four signal boxes.

Lichtenfels’ station area covered about 30 hectares and the railways employed about 29 percent of the city's workforce in 1914.

From 1934 to 1936 extensive works were carried out in preparation for the electrification of the line, including the building of a pedestrian underpass to the platforms, a road underpass for Coburger Straße, the raising of the level of the tracks and the installation of modern signal boxes and interlockings.

Now, the closest regular ICE stop is Bamberg and Intercity trains (Karlsruhe–Leipzig) serve Lichtenfels once a day each way.

[7] In regional transport, Lichtenfels is a hub with hourly connections to Upper Franconia and South Thuringia.

The station is the start or end point for Regionalbahn connections and a through station for an agilis connection and three Regional-Express services: Nuremberg – Fürth – Erlangen – Bamberg – Lichtenfels – Since December 2013, the regional express service, Würzburg–Bamberg–Lichtenfels–Bayreuth/Hof, has been divided into two lines.