About this journey

Wuppertal-Oberbarmen station opened on 9 October 1847 under the name Barmen-Rittershausen, built by the Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company on the Elberfeld–Dortmund line. Today the eastern terminus of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn stands alongside it, a reminder of how deeply railways shaped this valley city. The journey departs on a non-electrified double-track main line, so the GTW Generation 15 runs on diesel traction throughout.

South of Oberbarmen, the line passes through the Rauenthal Tunnel, bored as two parallel tubes through the hills. Since 2005 the eastern tube has been blocked for safety reasons, and trains use only the western tube. Beyond the tunnel, Rauenthal station sits in a deep cutting, a direct consequence of the demanding terrain. This same topography defines the route's character: the section between Remscheid and Solingen required numerous bridges and tunnels and was not completed until 1897, the same year the Müngsten Bridge — the highest steel railway bridge in Germany at 107 m — was inaugurated over the Wupper valley. The arc through the hills earned the line its popular name, the Korkenzieherbahn, or Corkscrew Railway, when the Solingen–Vohwinkel section opened on 12 February 1890.

The journey ends at Wuppertal-Vohwinkel station, whose origins date to 1841 and whose present building was designed by Alexander Rüdell for the Prussian state railways at the beginning of the 20th century — a composed, historic endpoint to a route shaped entirely by the geology beneath it.