Initial passenger-only service began on 1 July 1896, marking the commonly-accepted start of Cornwall's street railway era.

[2] Ridership grew quickly, but the company's financial situation was difficult, and freight service was introduced in 1899 in the hopes of generating more revenue.

However, the company would continue to work to trim down its workforce and cut costs, switching from two-man to one-man crews in 1927 and 1930.

[5] Like with many electric street and interurban railways, the system's swan song occurred during the Second World War, which stimulated freight and commuter traffic and reversed much of the industrial slump caused by the Great Depression.

Industrial production had begun to gradually consolidate, and factories became larger and more suburban, forcing workers to commute to them.

In Cornwall, the then-secret mustard gas plant on Wallrich Avenue led to the final extension of the system's lines.

Ultimately, the strike was ended when the union, management, and Ontario Minister of Labour Charles Daley met in Toronto and scrapped the earlier arbitration decision, replacing it with a blanket retroactive 5-cent increase, plus a 3-cent increase going forward, and improvements to overtime pay.

Many systems had been poorly maintained during the 1930s and 1940s, as the war and the Great Depression starved them of funds and materials for repair, and many streetcar manufacturers closed or shifted to manufacturing other types of vehicles, making it difficult and expensive to purchase new streetcars, as opposed to cheaper, standardized bus models.

Auto manufacturers had grown explosively during the Second World War due to government contracts for military vehicles, and public funds became more widely available for paved asphalt roads and highway construction.

[2] However, by this point the remaining railway infrastructure had been reduced to a number of industrial spurs connecting to the CN mainline, with most of the original street running sections having been removed in the 1950s after the switch to trolleybuses for passenger service.