[6][8] The incorporators included[9] Perkins; Dudley Baldwin, Cleveland investment banker;[10] Robert Cunningham, businessman in New Castle, Pennsylvania; Frederick Kinsman, a Trumbull County judge and land agent;[11] James Magee, a wealthy Philadelphia tack manufacturer and one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Railroad;[12] Charles Smith, a Warren businessman and banker;[13] and David Tod, Mahoning County attorney and former U.S. ambassador to Brazil.

[14] The initial board of directors included[3] Perkins, Baldwin, Kinsman, Smith, Tod, and Reuben Hitchcock, a judge from Painesville in Lake County, Ohio.

[6] The route then ran through Chagrin Falls, Garrettsville, Warren, Niles, Girard, Youngstown, Poland, and Petersburgh before terminating at Enon Valley, Pennsylvania.

It cut overland to the southeast to avoid the Scranton Flats and Collision Bend[e] and crossed to the east bank of the Cuyahoga just north of Kingsbury Run.

[2] Perkins returned to the United States, where board members pleaded with him to take over the railroad's presidency in an effort to improve its reputation among investors.

[41] With construction tentatively scheduled for completion between Cleveland and Warren in 1855, Perkins and Tod spent two weeks in December 1954 in Philadelphia, where they managed to personally borrow $20,000 ($700,000 in 2023 dollars) which enabled the company to purchase two locomotives.

[3][50] The road now had sufficient funds to buy rails to lay track from Cleveland to Youngstown and a limited quantity of rolling stock to begin operations.

[57] To accept freight directly from cargo ships, the railroad announced in March 1856 it would build docks on either side of Columbus Street on the south bank of the Cuyahoga River (the southernmost part of Irishtown Bend).

Weatherhead construction firm to build its first maintenance shops and roundhouse In Cleveland, just west of the intersection of Literary Road and Mahoning Avenue.

In April 1853, the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted legislation allowing the C&M to run cars to New Castle, but the statute did not authorize construction of a railroad.

With the C&M in financial difficulty due to the loss of coal traffic, the state of Ohio decided in 1863 to sell its stock in the canal to the railroad for $30,000 ($700,000 in 2023 dollars).

Officials of the A&GW PA traveled to the United Kingdom to seek investors, where it won the backing of expatriate railroad financier James McHenry.

Additional support came in July 1858 when José de Salamanca, 1st Count of los Llanos sold $1 million ($35,200,000 in 2023 dollars) of A&GW PA construction bonds in Spain.

Work resumed in mid-1862, and in February 1863 the English railway magnate Sir Morton Peto made an additional large investment in the three A&GWs (which established a joint board of directors to govern all three companies under the name "Atlantic and Great Western Railroad").

[87] This railroad traced its origins to an 1827 charter permitting construction of a 95-mile (153 km) line linking Ashtabula (on the shore of Lake Erie) with the village of New Lisbon in Columbiana County, Ohio.

Beginning in 1867, railroad developer and speculator Jay Gould had waged a successful stock battle for control of the Erie Railway.

[117] Its finances destabilized by the loss of rental income and security guarantees, the A&GW went into receivership on December 8, 1874,[118] The AG&W spent six years drifting through bankruptcy.

It was widely believed in the railroad industry that the A&GW could be made profitable with the expenditure of about $5 million ($143,100,000 in 2023 dollars), which would allow it to be converted to standard-gauge and purchase enough rolling stock to make it operational again.

[116] Finally, on March 16, 1880, the five trustees of the A&GW organized a new company, the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad (NYP&O, pronounced "Nip-ah-no"), on behalf of the bondholders.

[128] A joint study of the situation by the Erie and C&MV, released in February 1888, recommended that the line between Cleveland and Youngstown finally be double-tracked at a cost of $1.25 million ($42,400,000 in 2023 dollars).

[158] At some point, either the C&MV or the Erie had moved the main passenger and freight station away from Scranton Flats to a new depot located west of E. 93rd Street and Harvard Avenue in Cleveland's Union-Miles Park neighborhood.

[177] In 1982, Conrail removed 3.3 miles (5.3 km) of track in Cleveland, from the terminus on Whiskey Island to its Von Willer Yard (at E. 93rd Street and Harvard Avenue).

[183] Conrail sold in June 1994, among other assets, a 7.2-mile (11.6 km) segment of the Freedom Secondary between Kent and Ravenna to the newly formed Akron Barberton Cluster Railway.

[179] In June 2009, the Cleveland Commercial Railroad (CCR) signed an agreement in which it leased 25 miles (40 km) of the Randall Secondary (between the Von Willer Yard and the end of functioning track east of Aurora).

A $50,000 ($100,000 in 2023 dollars) bequest enabled the newly created Portage County Park District to begin grading the right of way and turning it into a biking aned hiking trail.

[197] The park district was able to obtain a missing 1.5-mile (2.4 km) long section of abandoned track[198] in 2003 for $46,000, enabling the eastern and western segments of the trail to connect.

[200] The same month, the park district signed a purchase agreement to obtain 0.8 miles (1.3 km) of abandoned track at the eastern terminus of the Headwaters Trail.

The plan also included the construction of a new pedestrian bridge over the Old Ship Channel of the Cuyahoga River to reconnect the tracks with the old C&MV rail yard (now part of Wendy Park).

The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a national nonprofit which coordinates and facilities the creation of parkland, negotiated on behalf of the group with Westbank Development Corp.[206] On December 28, 2009, TPL purchased for $3.2 million ($4,500,000 in 2023 dollars) title and an easement covering 1.3 miles (2.1 km) of former C&MV trackbed between the Old Ship Channel and the Cuyahoga River near Kingsbury Run.

This leg began at the northern terminus of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail and crossed the base of the Scranton Peninsula before terminating at Columbus Road on the eastern side of Irishtown Bend.