The first traffic ran over it on 15 October 1876. At the end of 1876, a pair expresses ran between Berlin and Aachen. A year later, a luxury train ran to Paris and Ostend. Meanwhile, support for a state railway prevailed in Prussia from 1879/80 and the lines of the BME were incorporated into the Prussian state railways in 1882. The Holzminden-Scherfede line was just a bit inconveniently near main lines, connected two steep lines and lay obliquely to the direction of the main traffic flows. The line bypassed Höxter and Warburg and was thus unsuitable for regional traffic. The long-distance trains ran over the line through Altenbeken. It was not until 1900, when traffic had grown substantially, that a pair of Durchgangszug (D-Zug, “corridor express train”) was established between Berlin and Cologne. The line was duplicated in 1907. A connecting curve was built in Nörde that allowed trains to be diverted by the Holzminden–Nörde–Altenbeken (–Soest route). After the Second World War, the section from Holzminden to Wehrden had a final period of prosperity as the Weser bridge on the Altenbeken–Kreiensen railway at Corvey had been destroyed. A connecting curve ("Engländerkurve", literally "Englishman curve") was built northwest of Wehrden that allowed operations from Holzminden to Altenbeken over the Fürstenberg bridge. From 1954, this was no longer necessary. The line declined to become a regional line, although until the end it was used by a D-Zug operated on the Aachen–Holzminden–Braunschweig route. It was frequently used until the early 1990s for the transfer of vehicles and tanks of the NATO forces. The British Army of the Rhine was responsible for the maintenance of the Fürstenberg bridge. Passenger traffic ended on 2 June 1984. Freight traffic was discontinued in sections from 1984 to 2001: between Beverungen and Borgholz on 30 May 1984; between Fürstenberg and Beverungen on 31 May 1988; between Holzminden and Furstenberg and between Borgholz and Nörde on 31 May 1992 and between Nörde and Scherfede on 10 June 2001.