Layton is an unincorporated community in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Layton is the former site of a large brickworks, due to local deposits of flint clay. It was also here that the Washington Run Railroad connected to the B&O Railroad. According to historian Franklin Ellis, "The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was the first corporation which made any act…Layton is an unincorporated community in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Layton is the former site of a large brickworks, due to local deposits of flint clay. It was also here that the Washington Run Railroad connected to the B&O Railroad. 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." In 1826, the company secured approval from the Pennsylvania General Assembly to build a railroad from Baltimore, Maryland through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania "to the Ohio River." The company was directed by legislators to complete its work within fifteen years. 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. As a result, the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad Company, which was incorporated in 1837, took over the legislature's plan for railroad expansion and became the first railroad to open a line within the county. The Pittsburgh and Connellsville company then began purchasing the necessary land, rights of way and equipment, initiated the first construction efforts on its rail line, opened depot grounds at West Newton and Connellsville, and then also purchased land for stations at: "Port Royal, Smith's Mill, Jacob's Creek, Layton, Old Franklin Iron Works, Smilie's Run, and at Rists's Run, below Connellsville." The completed rail line to Connellsville was then officially opened in 1855.
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