Although the Landau–Rohrbach railway was once a major east–west route for freight and was used for long-distance transport, the line is now used exclusively for regional passenger services.

After leaving the station, it branches off the Palatine Maximilian Railway to the left and runs around the city of Landau in a wide arc.

In Wilgartswiesen, the Landau–Rohrbach railway leaves the Queich valley and runs through the Hinterweidenthal, a narrow depression that separates the Wasgau and the Middle Palatinate Forest, and it now passes through the Südwestpfalz district.

After Hinterweidenthal Ost station, the Wieslauter Railway branches off to Bundenthal-Rumbach; it only operates from May to October on Sundays and public holidays.

Arriving at the western edge of the Palatinate forest, the line reaches the railway junction of Pirmasens Nord (formerly Biebermühle).

From Lautzkirchen it follows the wooded Würzbach valley, which separates the Kirkeler forest from the plateau of Bliesgau, which has a more open landscape character.

It passes the Würzbach pond (Niederwürzbacher Weiher), a major regional centre for tourism and finally runs through Hassel to Rohrbach, where it meets the Palatine Ludwig Railway from Homburg.

Early efforts were made to promote the building of a line from Zweibrücken to Landau; there was support for this especially in the towns in the Queich valley.

Against this background, the planning committee initially considered, as an alternative solution, the establishment of a branch line from Landau to Annweiler.

The first draft favoured a new line directly via Hengsberg, while the second option was an alignment through Walshausen and along the Trualbe through Hornbach and Ixheim.

As early as 25 November 1875, the line was extended to Zweibrücken and connected to the link to the Palatine Ludwig Railway.

[6][7] Conceptually, it was a direct continuation of the Germersheim–Landau railway and the official chainage (distance markings) run in sequence over both routes.

At the same time, a branch line was opened from Biebermühle station, which is located at the confluence of the Rodalb with the Schwarzenbach, to Pirmasens.

After the Bruhrain Railway (Bruhrainbahn) between Bruchsal and Rheinsheim had been extended to Germersheim in May 1877, the now continuous connection became one of the major freight routes in Germany,[8] carrying mainly coal and iron from the Saar region to the industrial centres of the upper Rhine and southern Germany.

Above all, the military criticised the condition of the tunnel, since it was a bottleneck and thus was not sufficient to ensure, if necessary, the rapid transport of troops and ordnance to France.

These changes had the effect of making the Rohrbach–Einöd–Zweibrücken line part of the South Palatine Railway from Landau to Saarbrücken.

In addition, the performance of the line was improved with technical innovations, including at Zweibrücken station, which acquired two electro-mechanical signal boxes in 1940.

Especially in the Kaiserslautern–Neustadt section, the difficult topography (including many tunnels) meant that this work required single-track operations and speed restrictions so that the capacity of the line was limited.

The freight on the Queichtalbahn declined rapidly as it now largely ran over the much higher-capacity Palatine Ludwig Railway.

This rationalisation culminated in 1993, with Deutsche Bundesbahn's railway division of Saarbrücken developing plans to abandon the Annweiler–Pirmasens section permanently.

As part of this program, the Rosengartenexpress service was introduced in 1997; it operated on Sundays and public holidays as an excursion train from Landau to Zweibrücken and was categorised as a Regional-Express.

In this context, the Public Transport Association of Rhineland-Palatinate South (Zweckverband SchienenPersonenNahVerkehr Rheinland-Pfalz Süd) is planning to open Annweiler-Sarnstall station in June 2012.

Most freight on the Landau–Rohrbach railway in its first decades was coal transported from the Saar, but this declined very much over the years and is now completely abandoned.

[11] The reduction of the line to single-track for reparations after the Second World War played a major role in the loss of freight.

The John Deere company, which manufactures agricultural equipment, has a factory in Zweibrücken, from which freight trains were loaded with combine harvesters before the traffic converted to road transport.

In 2002, the last freight loading point on the line at Thaleischweiler-Fröschen was closed; its last customer was the company Reno, a retailer of shoes.