New sections of the line were also built between Wörth and Mühlburg mainly in connection with the commissioning of a fixed bridge over the Rhine.

In this context, a proposal was made for a route from Zweibrücken along the Schwarzbach and via Rodalben, Annweiler and Langenkandel (later: Kandel) on the Rhine, which was not accepted.

It was hoped that the planned route would transport coal to better markets in the southern German countries of Baden, Württemberg and the main part of Bavaria, which was geographically separated from the Circle of the Rhine (Rheinpfalz).

[5] The municipality of Kandel, in particular, fought strongly for such a line, referring in this context to the large number of inhabitants in its area and the creation of jobs in the construction of the railway.

[4] The Bavarian Karl Krazeisen, who was at that time a troop commander in the Palatinate, emphasised that such a route was necessary for strategic reasons.

[6] In 1859, the Palatine Maximilian Railway Company received a concession for the line from the Ministry of Trade and Public Works.

[4] In addition, several representatives of South Palatine municipalities came together in Rülzheim in 1860, which instead petitioned against a route via Winden and Kandel instead argued for a line from Landau via Offenbach, Herxheim, Leimersheim and Leopoldshafen to Karlsruhe.

They argued that a route via Winden and Kandel was contrary to the public interest and would be exclusively a "coal railway", which primarily served its shareholders.

In this context, they referred to the foodstuffs produced in Rülzheim, the weavers resident in Herxheim, and the trade in hemp and flax fibre and the handling of goods in the port of Leimersheim.

[7] Bavaria passed a law on 10 November 1861 that guaranteed the company a grant of interest for a total investment of one and a half million gulden.

Although it ran through Minfeld, a district to the south-east of Winden, it did not have a station, because a cattle trough had had to be relocated for the track construction and this had led to conflicts.

[8] Although the line was used to carry passengers, the change of locomotive required to cross the Rhine prevented significant through traffic.

[10] The operator of the east-bank section was the Grand Duchy of Baden State Railway (Großherzoglich Badische Staatseisenbahnen).

Among them was a train connection running from Neustadt via Landau and Winden—initially due to the different national occupation zones, bypassing Karlsruhe by means of the curve that had been built in 1944—to Baden-Baden.

The Regionalbahn services from Karlsruhe to Neustadt all stop at the stations of Wörth Alte Bahnmeisterei, Maximiliansau Eisenbahnstraße and Maxau.

Line S 51 (Germersheim–Karlsruhe Innenstadt) also runs on the route from Wörth to shortly before Karlsruhe Hauptbahnhof, however these services do not serve Maximiliansau Eisenbahnstraße and Maxau.

In the first years of its existence, the line from Winden to Karlsruhe mainly served the coal transport to Southern Germany.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Deutsche Bundesbahn rationalised these operations, which meant that the beet traffic changed to road transport.

Connecting lines branch off from the Karlsruhe-Rheinbrücke operating station to the MiRO oil refinery and to a Stora Enso paper factory.

[48] The freight operations of the former Karlsruhe-Mühlburg station have been abandoned, so it has been reclassified as a Haltepunkt (halt), which means that it does not have any set of points.

Regionalbahn services were operated from the 1980s until December 2010 with class 628 diesel multiple units, which had replaced the Uerdingen railbuses previously used.

From Winden to Maximiliansau Eisenbahnstraße, the line passes through the Rhineland-Palatinate district of Germersheim and the remaining section is located within the Baden-Württemberg city of Karlsruhe.

Thus the station was the fifth railway junction to be established within the Palatinate after Schifferstadt (1847), Ludwigshafen (1853), Neustadt an der Haardt (1855) and Homburg (1857).

The AVG-operated station has one 38 centimetre-high and 80 metre-long island platform and is exclusively served by line S 5 of the Karlsruhe Stadtbahn.

Maximiliansau station existed from 1864 to 1938 and was located on the old railway line that was abandoned during the construction of a fixed Rhine bridge in favour of a route further south.

During the installation of the second track on the line between Wörth and the Rhine bridge in the mid-1990s and the accompanying opening of the Maximiliansau West station, it was given its present name and was equipped with an additional platform.

The station—in contrast to the similar Maximiliansau West station—is within walking distance of the Globus-Baumarkt Wörth and the Maximiliancenter shopping centre and has been served by the Stadtbahn since 2009.

Maxau halt (sometimes referred to as Karlsruhe-Maxau by the Karlsruhe Stadtbahn) is located immediately east of the Rhine bridge and mainly serves excursion traffic.

Karlsruhe Hauptbahnhof has existed in its present form since 1913 and replaced the original station on the edge of the city centre.

[53] The Überprüfung der Bedarfspläne für Schienenwege ("checking the requirements for railways") of the Federal Ministry of Transport, which was published on 11 November 2010, mentions the construction of a connecting route between Rastatt and Karlsruhe West as item PF25 (upgrade of the Mannheim node).