Surveying began on December 1, 1871, and chief engineer John Mifflin Hood recommended adoption of 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge, which was very popular at the time as a method of reducing construction costs.
[1] Ground was broken on the Eastern Division in August 1872 at Oxford, on the Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad, and construction westward began.
Hood surveyed a route for the Western Division via East Berlin, Biglerville and Arendtsville, following Conewago Creek through the Narrows and the Chambersburg-Gettysburg road through a gap in South Mountain.
[3] A contretemps occurred when President Boyd opposed extension of the Middle Division to Peach Bottom, on the grounds that it would generate no local traffic and there was no prospect of bridging the Susquehanna in the near future.
In 1877, he was replaced by Charles McConkey, a resident of Peach Bottom, but finances did not allow for construction on the extension to continue,[1] although the Eastern Division finally reached the Susquehanna in 1878.
In 1889 the York and Peach Bottom was purchased by the Maryland Central Railway, and a new consolidated company was formed, the Baltimore and Lehigh Railroad, in 1891.