The first section of the railway, entirely within Henan, from Kaifeng to Luoyang was built from 1905 to 1909 by a venture between the Qing dynasty and a Belgian joint-stock company backed by France and Russia.

[1] The railway was the centerpiece of Japanese operations in Henan during the Second Sino-Japanese War, with the Imperial Japanese Army repeatedly attempting to seize the railway in 1938 in the Battle of Northern and Eastern Henan[2] and later during Operation Ichi-go.

[3] Construction of the Tianshui to Lanzhou section, entirely within Gansu, broke ground in May 1946 but was halted by Chinese Civil War, then resumed under the People's Republic in April 1950 and was completed in July 1953.

From 1956 to 1970, the section between Zhengzhou, Henan, and Baoji, Shaanxi, was upgraded to the dual-track line.

The corridor was extended with the opening in February 2021 of the Lianyungang–Xuzhou high-speed railway, which runs parallel to the Longhai line between Xuzhou and Lianyungang.