November 1873, a new line was opened from the existing line of the former Frankfurt-Offenbach Railway in Oberrad to connect the line to the Main-Neckar Railway station in Frankfurt. As early as 1874 two more tracks were laid in order to cope with the increased traffic. On 2 December 1875, Bebra Station in Frankfurt (now called South station) was finally opened southwest of the old Sachsenhausen station. At the same time the previous connection to the Main-Neckar bridge was abandoned and removed. The former Frankfurt-Offenbach Railway line became the Lokalbahn (Local Railway) and now operated only as a shuttle service between Offenbach and Frankfurt Localbahn station (Lokalbahnhof), as it was now renamed. In 1881 Frankfurt Lokalbahn station was connected to the network of the Frankfurter Trambahn-Gesellschaft, the Frankfurt tram company. From 1884 the Lokalbahn was affected seriously by competition from the Frankfurt-Offenbach Tramway Company (Frankfurt-Offenbacher Trambahn-Gesellschaft, FOTG), the first electric tramway in Germany and the fourth in the world. Although the Lokalbahn offered lower fares and faster journey times, the tram ran to the centre of Offenbach and Oberrad. Patronage on the Lokalbahn fell from 1,601,826 in 1883 to 1,405,519 persons in 1884, while the FOTG had 440,000 passengers in its first year. The Frankfurt Forest Railway (Frankfurter Waldbahn), a steam tramway, had used the Lokalbahnhof as its terminus since 6 February 1889. From 1885, the Lokalbahn carried a significant volume of goods for the first time: the Sachsenhausen slaughterhouse was connected by a siding to Frankfurt Lokalbahn station and had its own "cattle yard" station, which handled cattle shipments. In 1900, however, the siding was replaced with a branch off the Bebra Railway at Oberrad, ending the transport of goods on the Lokalbahn. A serious decline in the number of passengers came in 1906 with the integration of the former FOTG line to Offenbach into the Frankfurt tram network, allowing a direct service from Offenbach to central Frankfurt. As a consequence, the number of passengers on the Lokalbahn was reduced by a quarter, while the aging infrastructure of the railway had an increasing impact on costs. The line made its first major losses, so the Prussian State Railways contemplating a sale of the line to the cities of Frankfurt and Offenbach. These were planning the electrification and modernisation of the line and a connection to Frankfurt South or Hauptbahnhof. At times, the conversion of the line into an electric