As of 1 April 1850, the two railway companies came under the management of the Royal Division of the Aachen-Düsseldorf-Ruhrort Railway in Aachen.
The initiative for the railway line came from the industrialists of Krefeld and Mönchengladbach, who intended to give domestic industry cheap access to raw materials from overseas via the port of Antwerp and to cheap supplies of coal from the Ruhr.