The railroad consists of 38 miles (61 km) of track connecting the mainline of the Florida East Coast Railway and trackage at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

In 1963, the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) constructed a 7.5 miles (12.1 km) branch from its mainline to the Kennedy Space Center just north of Titusville.

East of Wilson Yard, the line divided with the nine-mile "West Leg" branch going south to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building and the Kennedy Space Center Industrial Area, and the other nine-mile "East Leg" branch which ran along the Atlantic Ocean to serve launch pads 39A and 39B, as well as to interchange with the former Cape Canaveral Air Force Station railroad.

During its first five years of operation, the railroad delivered over 30,000 carloads of aggregate that was used to construct the crawlerway that connected the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pads at LC-39.

During the late 1970s, as NASA transitioned from the Apollo to the Space Shuttle program, it acquired three World War II-era ex-U.S Army ALCO S-2 locomotives, which provided local switching around the Vehicle Assembly Building and within the KSC Industrial Area.

In June 1983, NASA purchased the 7.5 miles (12.1 km) portion of the railroad line owned by the FEC, which included the drawbridge over the Indian River.

It was during this time that NASA decided to completely rebuild and upgrade the railroad due to the hazardous materials that were being hauled, particularly the solid rocket booster segments for the space shuttle.

Much of the rail traffic was devoted to sending segments of the reusable solid rocket boosters (SRB) from the Thiokol plant in Utah back again for refurbishment after Space Shuttle launches and recovery.