The America Line (Amerikalinie), which ran from Berlin to Bremerhaven via Soltau, had considerable significance for passenger and goods traffic from the ports of the North Sea at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

[4][5] After the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover by Prussia in 1866, the Prussian capital, it was decided to connect Berlin to the ports on the North Sea by the shortest route.

Because of the better connection to the trunk road (now federal highway 3), the state commission preferred a location east of today's Celler Straße.

Because the citizens in Fallingbostel, in particular, demanded a connection from Walsrode and Soltau, a line was finally approved and it was opened on 30 September 1896.

[6] In addition, a connection from Soltau to Buchholz, that is towards Hamburg, was opened on 1 October 1901, completing the line now called the Heath Railway.

[8] In the 1920s, semi-fast trains that stopped only at the main stations also ran on the Heath Railway and, for example, reduced the travel time from Hanover to Soltau to less than two hours.

[10] In the 1930s, especially on Sundays and public holidays, thousands of day trippers from the cities of Hanover, Altona and Harburg took the train to the heath.

[10] The importance of the Soltau station was also evident in its outward appearance, such as the entrance building with its numerous outbuildings and signal boxes as well as the length of the main platforms.

The National Socialist People's Welfare ran a soup kitchen at the station and there was a military hospital barracks there.

In 1945, thousands of concentration camp prisoners, crammed into cattle wagons, were transported through the stations along the Heath Railway.

[11] The Berlin – Soltau (– Bremen) route was cut after the Second World War by the occupation zone border and lost its national significance.

The operation of trains from Neuenkirchen to the Deutsche Bundesbahn station (and vice versa) would have required a reversal (with locomotive running around); instead, passenger services on this line were closed on 28 May 1961.

[4] The Rettet die Heidebahn (save the Heath Railway) association was founded in 1984 and operated more than 70 special trips with a total of 35,000 passengers in the following years.

[13] In 1989, after an upgrade of the line, a ceremony was also held in Soltau for the inauguration of the so-called Neuen Heidebahn (new Heath Railway).

Numerous special trains ran in the 1990s on the Heath Railway and through Soltau, so there were in 1994, for example, trips to Bad Segeberg, Westerland, Cologne and the island of Rügen.

From 2005 the establishment of a memorial for the murdered prisoners transported to concentration camps by train in 1945 was discussed, which was originally intended to be located at the station.

[14] It was finally built in 2007 near the site of the killings in the Forst Sibirien (forest) of stelae modelled directly on those of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

[16] At the beginning of November 2009, the Train of Remembrance (Zug der Erinnerung), which commemorated the children deported to the extermination camps, stopped at Soltau station.

In December 2011, the erixx railway company took over operations on the Hanover–Buchholz and Uelzen–Bremen routes, the so-called Heidekreuz (heath cross), from DB Regio.

DB persisted with its plan, with Soltau station to be made accessible from 2015/2016 during the Heath Railway modernisation.

[18] As part of this modernisation, which has been underway since 2008, the maximum speed will be raised along the entire route to 120 km/h and will shorten the travel time from Hannover to Buchholz by about half an hour.

In September 2008 and March 2009, one wall each of the tunnel underpass was decorated by Soltau pupils with pictures of the town and the theme Stiftung Spiel (foundation game).

The local Social Democratic Party of Germany has set up an office in the express goods shed and a sheltered workshop in the depot.

Occasionally the lines of the OHE to Lüneburg and Celle are used by individual heritage railway trips, for instance the Heide Express operated by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Verkehrsfreunde Lüneburg e. V. In addition, the Ameisenbär (anteater), a historic railcar of the Wismar class from 1937 is operated in the summer from Soltau via Bispingen to Döhle.

Nine bus lines of the Verkehrsgemeinschaft Nordost-Niedersachsen (VNN) connect the station with the surrounding towns of Schneverdingen (Linie 106), Bispingen (154), Neuenkirchen (205), Munster (305) or Wietzendorf (355) and the Soltau suburbs.

Until April 2014, the station was a stop of the daily Cuxhaven–Berlin long-distance bus route operated by Berlin Linien Bus-Gesellschaft.