Within a few years after the opening of the Pennsylvania Railroad, a station was constructed for locomotives to stop to take on water and pick up wood to fire the boiler. This lasted until the wood was replaced by coal to fire the locomotives. All of the lumber and coal industries in Portage caused a population boom, and by the 1860s a passenger station was built by the railroad along the mainline, which at the time traveled through the center of town on what is now the Sonman Branch Line.