The Rhenish donkey is the name of the 1880 opened railway line between Dortmund-Löttringhausen and Bochum-Langendreer. It was built with very little slope in the northern foothills of the Ardey Mountains and runs partly on high dams over the area. From Löttringhausen with connection to the railway line Dortmund-Hagen it goes first in the west past Kruckel and Annen to the freight yard Witten-Ost. Here, the course changes in the north past Stockum to Langendreer with connection to the rail lines from Dortmund to Bochum and from Hagen to Bochum, which still separate there today. For the most part, today's S-Bahn line from Dortmund to Witten accompanies the Rhenish donkey at a surprisingly short distance. The length of the route was about 13 kilometers. Main users were the freight traffic of the neighboring companies and mines and the workers who used the train there on the way to work. Believing the numerous coinciding legends, the extremely unusual name of the route comes from the numerous market women who carried their goods like packed donkeys. Passenger traffic was discontinued in 1979, the eastern section between Löttringhausen and Witten-Ost 1982 decommissioned and dismantled. In the western section of goods traffic was also set in 2001, first between Stockum and Witten-East and finally from Langendreer to Stockum 2004 and the road was rebuilt. Already in the 1980s, a Bahntrassenradweg was built on the eastern part. In 2012, the western section became a cycle path - the sections of different age can be distinguished by the route surface, which does not change halfway along the route. Individual relics such as the platform edges of railway stops, sections of rails and switches, switchboxes on former level crossings, telephone boxes or whistles and milestones are still present or rebuilt, reminiscent of the original use of the route and make the bike path thematically authentic.