Excited by the prospects of connecting the C&E with the vast coal reserves of the southern part of the state, shareholders voted to increase the capital stock from $500,000 to $2 million and authorized a bond issue to finish the railroad from Winchester to Portsmouth, and to then build an extension to Gallipolis on November 21, 1880.
[6] The high expense of the bridge and building an alignment through the Scioto Brush Creek valley caused the C&E to enter bankruptcy again on September 14.
A court authorized receiver approved the expenditure of $180,000 to convert the line west of Winchester to standard gauge, but the collapse of the 800-foot Nineveh trestle on the New Richmond branch on August 8 scuttled those plans.
The O&NW moved immediately to standard gauge the ex-C&E mainline between Cincinnati to Portsmouth which was completed by November 1887.
[2] Under receivership, the O&NW completed five miles (8.0 km) of its long-awaited Gallipolis extension between Portsmouth and Sciotoville in February 1889.
The mainline between was realigned in 1947 when a quarry opened along Plum Run required the line to be rerouted, which included the erection of a new trestle above Cedar Fork and the laying of several miles (km) of new track.
Because of the Portsmouth Branch's sharp curves, steep grades, and a lack of customers, Norfolk Southern railbanked the Peavine between Peebles and Vera Junction in 2003.
In late 2016, the CCET renamed itself the Cincinnati Eastern Railroad and filed with the STB to lease and operate more of the Portsmouth Branch between Williamsburg and Plum Run east of Peebles for the storage of cars.