With minimal initial financial backing from the Pennsylvania Railroad and Northern Central Railway, construction of the nearly 50-mile line continued at a slow pace for the next three years, with work progressing inward from both the eastern and western termini.

The western group covered more territory, as the completion of the line's eastern end was contingent on the construction of the half-mile-long Selinsgrove Bridge spanning the Susquehanna River.

Freight traffic peaked on the line between 1900 and 1908, possibly in preparation for a planned (but canceled) PRR yard north of Selinsgrove in Shamokin Dam.

The PRR sold its large tract to Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. for a new coal-fired power plant in 1945, to be served by both a PRR spur north from the S&L at a wye on the west end of the Susquehanna River Bridge and a spur south from the Reading Railroad at Clement Station, opposite Sunbury.

In late 2021, the SEDA-COG Joint Rail Authority approved the purchase of operating rights over the nine miles of track between Selinsgrove Junction and Kreamer plus the spur to the Panda Hummel power plant, for $371,200.

[1] Today, parts of the former railroad grade between Kreamer and Maitland are still visible, though decades of development in the area have erased many segments.

Leaving south from the station at Sunbury, S&L traffic shared track with the Northern Central, which had been constructed a decade earlier.

The S&L track was laid directly onto Chestnut Street, connecting with the Pennsylvania Railroad for the final leg to Lewistown.

One average the route took a little over an hour to complete, but a special train run shortly after the line's opening in 1871 made it from Sunbury to Lewistown in under forty five minutes.