Reach Township started filling out in the 1840s and developed a rivalry between three incorporated towns, Prince Albert, Port Perry and Manchester.

Rivalries between the towns were intense, and Peter Perry predicted that one day goats would eat grass off of Prince Albert's main street.

[1] Grain and timber, the major exports from the area to the north, were hauled to Prince Albert, ganged into larger loads, and then sent southward by horse team on Simcoe Street for shipment abroad.

[2] In the 1850s Abraham Farewell, an early advocate of the development of Ontario County through the construction of gravel roads, predicted that unless a railway was built from Georgian Bay to Whitby, control of the inland grain and timber trade would be taken over by Toronto and Port Hope interests.

If a railway was built to the lakeshore, barges could carry produce to Port Perry and then be quickly trans-shipped southward.

Lake Scugog was the southernmost point easily reachable from the Trent-Severn, cutting almost 100 kilometres (62 mi) off the route.

Adam Gordon, at one time a Canadian Member of Parliament, wanted the line to pass through Manchester, where he lived and was very active in local politics.

[2] A route was finally decided on, making all of the towns happy, running just south of Manchester and east of Prince Albert with the terminus on the shore of Lake Scugog in Port Perry.

Access from Lindsay to the south was an important part of the Midland Railway's plan of business, connecting to the mainlines in Port Hope.

The newly formed Government of Canada refused to fund the effort, stating that they did not want to get involved in what appeared to be a turf-war between the PW&PP and the Midland Railway.

The poor foundation of the roadbed often led to the engine sinking in the marshy area between High Point and Manchester.

The hills of the Oak Ridges Moraine south of Reach gave the railway its nickname because it was "nip n' tuck" whether or not it could make its way up the grade when loaded.

[2] The eventual cost of the railway was over one million dollars, and despite all the bonuses, federal and provincial subsidies, with $600,000 in bonds the company was too heavily indebted to ever become really profitable.

The PW&PP ran almost due north from a dock at Port Whitby to its own two-story station in Whitby, then a meandering northward path through the Oak Ridges Moraine with stations at Brooklin, Myrtle, south of Manchester, east of Prince Albert and finally running northeast into Port Perry.

The last remaining portion of the line itself was under the Roadhouse Motor Hotel where it crossed Scugog Street, but disappeared when the site was redeveloped by Shopper's Drug Mart.

A small portion of the former railbed forms Old Rail Line street in Port Perry, just north of the final location of the station.