According to historian Franklin Ellis, "The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was the first corporation which made any actual movement towards the construction of a railway line through the valleys of the Youghiogheny and Monongahela rivers."

Surveys of possible sites for the B&O line in Fayette County were made between 1836 and 1838, but when planners realized that they would not be able to meet their fifteen-year deadline, they requested, and received, legislative approval to extend their completion date to February 1847.

Unable to meet that extended deadline and now facing competition from the Pennsylvania Railroad, B&O executives were forced to abandon their planned expansion through Fayette County.

[1] According to Ellis, Layton Station was situated on two hundred and seventeen acres of land that were originally patented on April 6, 1791 by "Mary Higgs (a daughter of John Shreve)" and named "Springfield."

Espy's sons, Hugh and Robert, who subsequently inherited the land in December 1813, sold it to Abraham Layton for two thousand three hundred and fifty-two dollars on October 25, 1821.