A single-tracked line of eight and a half miles length, its revenue came largely from the transport of coal from the pits of the lower Derwent valley to the port at Workington for shipment by sea.

The completion of the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway made the C&WR part of a continuous through route between South Durham and the Cumberland orefield.

c. lxiv): George Stephenson took a day out from surveying the line of the WJR to confirm that a railway between Cockermouth and Workington could be constructed cheaply and easily.

c. cxx) was obtained; there was no opposition in committee,[5] and royal assent was given on 21 July 1845[6] Ground was first broken 8 February 1846 (near Broughton Cross),[7] and the line opened 27 April 1847.

By the first half of 1849 (when the harbour improvements were complete) the total capital expenditure on the railway was over £120,000 and the revenue from minerals traffic was only £1,484 from coals, £257 from lime.

[20][c] In response to lower than predicted traffic receipts, the line was run on 'the most economical principles': the salary of the secretary/manager was reduced, leading to the departure of the incumbent for the similar post with the Maryport and Carlisle and his replacement by a younger man acting as secretary/manager/engineer.

[d] The Railway Times approved, noting 'altogether the economical management of this line is most satisfactory',[24] (working expenses for the first half of 1852 were only 35% of receipts [25]) but a comic novel of 1851 poked fun at the C&W for having pursued economy to the point where all the platform staff were too young to shave, and passengers arrived covered in smuts because the locomotives were burning coal rather than coke.

[28] In 1853, the C&W (which had been disrupted by floods and damage to bridges in the previous winter) approached the Whitehaven Junction to discuss amalgamation,[23] but was rebuffed by the WJR.

In the first half of 1853, the C&W's traffic was declining, the directors were unable to recommend a half-year dividend any greater than two shillings (1% a year) and some shareholders thought even this imprudent as it left almost nothing in the contingency fund.

[29] In 1854, an attempt by the former chairman to reduce the number of directors revealed tensions between those who felt the company was being run by and for 'the coal interest', and the mine-owners who thought not enough was being done to assist them.

[31] The Fletchers had recently opened a new mine at Crossbarrow (west of Bridgefoot);[18]: 163  coal raised there was now being carted direct to Workington harbour rather than (as initially) to the Marron siding.

[31] The problem, retorted the Fletchers (complaining of 'vague innuendos and underhand detraction'), was not price, although they were unhappy to be charged more than Lord Lonsdale for rail transport from the Marron siding; Mr Harris was now asking a prohibitive toll for access to his staith because he thought the provision of waggons and of ship-loading facilities at Workington inadequate for the existing coal trade.

Carriage rates for coal had been set too low, with the result that the colliery owners kept their pits open and made large profits, whilst the ordinary C&W shareholder had lost three-quarters of their money.

[38] Despite a flurry of pseudonymous letters in the Cumberland Pacquet[39][f] denouncing dictation by the 'coal interest', the C&W board acceded to Fletchers' demands, reducing the rate per waggon from 3s10d to 2s6d.

The company half-yearly meeting in February 1857 was the first after Mr Dodds' departure, and the report to shareholders contained multiple criticisms of his regime.

[i] Dodds defended himself by attacking the competence of Mr Tosh (who could not reply, because not a shareholder) and alleging that the stores accounts for the last half-year had been wilfully falsified.

"Under the existing management the property of the company was being wasted, four-fifths of the money expended during the last half-year was altogether unnecessary, and the directors were not deserving the confidence of the shareholders."

[42][43] In March 1857, a special train carried the Conservative candidates for the forthcoming election at Cockermouth (and about three hundred of their supporters) to their nomination meeting.

The copy of Captain Tyler's report sent to the C&W was accompanied by the comment "My Lords direct me to observe, that it appears from this report that the accident in question was entirely due to the employment of a defectively-constructed engine upon a bad road, and that therefore serious blame is to be attributed to those in whom the management of the railway is vested"[44] Dodds returned to the attack against the board at the August 1857 half-yearly meeting, but this time received much less support.

[12][l] There the matter rested: Whellan's The History and topography of the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland of 1860 noted Mr Harris to have a single pit at Bridgefoot employing about 70 men;[55]: 299  the Fletchers' Clifton Colliery employed 600 hands, could raise up to 800 tons of coal a day and "the Workington harbour and the Cockermouth and Workington railway are both chiefly dependent for their revenue upon the Clifton Colliery".

[62] The prospects of the C&W were significantly improved by the actions of others: the improvement of port facilities at Workington and the construction of railways whose connection with the C&W changed it from being an insignificant dead-end branch to a link in through routes for the exploitation of the haematite ore-field a few miles south of the Derwent In 1860, one of the Fletchers wrote on behalf of local coal- and iron-masters to the Workington Harbour trustees calling for a wet-dock at Workington to accommodate the growing traffic from local industry (and the expected increase in traffic from the proposed Penrith-Cockermouth and Lamplugh-Bridgefoot rail links) and to combat the loss of trade to the newly opened wet dock at Maryport.

[76] However the new directors were also closely associated with the 'Castle' (pro-Lowther) faction in Whitehaven politics, and with the Solway Junction Railway; it was later suggested that their election had been intended to pave the way for the lease of the C&W by the WJR[69] (which they supported and the WC&E opposed).

Mineral traffic over the Marron extension began 15 January 1866, it being claimed that it reduced carriage costs by 1s 6d per ton, compared to the route via Whitehaven:.

[80] However, in October 1864 they were, it being understood that the LNWR and the North Eastern Railway (which had absorbed the Stockton and Darlington) had offered to jointly lease the C&W at an 8% guaranteed dividend.