The Rostock Seehafen station yard, which is seven kilometres long, is one of the most important freight nodes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

An initially temporary track was laid down in 1958-59 to the port area via Rostock Dierkow[2] and an extension was built that branches from the Stralsund–Rostock railway west of Bentwisch and is part of the current route.

[3] In the following years, the network was slowly but steadily expanded and the result was one of the largest railway yards in East Germany, with 240 kilometres of track in 1987.

From 1988, the service to Seehafen Nord was officially considered part of the Rostock S-Bahn, which had been established in 1975,[9] and almost all trains now continued on the line to Warnemünde.

The two intermediate stations, Rostock Überseehafen Mitte and Süd were renamed in the early 1970s as Rostock-Toitenwinkel and Dierkow West, but the latter closed a few years later.

Officially the reason given for the operation of this rollingstock was that it would continue to the port, providing a direct connection with the terminal of the Scandinavian ferries.

In the spring of 2012, it was announced that the Ministry of Energy, Infrastructure and Regional Development of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had cancelled the rail passenger services to Rostock Seehafen from the timetable change in 2012 due to the massive losses on the route.

The Rostock City Council contradicted this and argued for an extension of the S-Bahn to the ferry terminal at the port.

It runs in a cutting on the eastern edge of Rostock Brinckmansdorf and crosses the Stralsund line to the west of Bentwisch.

The route of the former S-Bahn line ran along the southwestern edge of the freight yard next to the housing estates of Dierkow and Toitenwinkel, which were developed in the 1980s.

The actual port area, which was fenced off during East German times and was not accessible to the public, begins at the northwestern end of the line.