The Nienburg–Minden railway is a single track branch line in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, which connects Nienburg station on the Wunstorf–Bremen railway with Minden station on the Hamm–Minden railway. The most important traffic of the line is the freight running from the marshalling yard at Hamburg to the Ruhr and on to southern Germany as well as the container traffic from the seaports to the hinterland. It is sometimes called the Natobahn (NATO railway) because of its former military importance. History The line was opened in 1921. All stations on the line were served in the 1944 timetable. Weekend traffic was reintroduced in 2001. After that the RB 76 service (Minden–Rotenburg on the Wanne-Eickel–Hamburg railway) was used especially by travellers using the Schönes-Wochenende ("happy weekend") ticket (an excursion ticket that can be used on local services nationwide on weekends), because it has the shortest travel times between the Ruhr area and Hamburg using local services. As a result of the reduction of the regionalisation funds, it was proposed that regional services would be discontinued in December 2007. This would have meant that the investment made a few years ago for the reopening and the enlargement of the Petershagen-Lahde station would have gone to waste, but the abolition of local services was averted. Due to the very low demand for through traffic, the operation of through services between Minden and Rotenburg was abandoned from Mondays to Fridays. Since then the line has been served by the RE 78 (Nienburg–Bielefeld) service. With the introduction of the new service in 2007, class 644 (Bombardier Talent) diesel multiple units were originally used; these had previously also been used on Bielefeld–Minden shuttle services. In 2009, they were replaced by class 425 and 426 electric multiple units and occasionally supplemented by double-decker trains in the evening. Due to a lack of class 426 rolling stock, all trains were formed from class 111 electric locomotives hauling two double-decker cars of the 1994 series from February 2017 until the December 2017 timetable change. Services on the weekend, ran at two-hour intervals (compared to the approximately hourly services on working days) as the RB 76 (Minden–Rotenburg) service. This was formerly operated by DB Regio Nord with locomotive-hauled trains. It consisted of locomotives of classes 141, 111 or 143 with double-deck or Silberling carriages. Since the end of 2014, the EVB has operated the services on behalf of DB