[3] The 'Master Gott' was a drainage ditch built by Patrick Warner to reclaim the bogs and lochans at his Ardeer Estate and sections of this were used in the canal.

As developed by James Brindley[8] and practiced elsewhere later, puddled clay was used to seal the canal; it brought in with difficulty by cart and took four months[9] to build and cost the Stevenston Coal Company £4,857/4s.

The waggonway had at first wood rails attached to stone sleepers, the permanent way being built along the rocks of the foreshore, however the Earl of Eglinton disputed the ownership of the land.

Local householders also complained that the waggonway restricted their access to the seashore as the high wall so characteristic of the harbour environs was built to protect the line from the sea.

By 1812 the track had reached as far as the Saracen's Head Inn and as the earl failed to pursue the legal case the waggonway was completed and was in active use with the Stevenston Coal Company owning fifty horses used for hauling the waggons as well as towing the barges.

[16][17] In the storms of 2014, sections of three-foot lengths of cast-iron L-shaped plateway waggonway rails were found in amongst the spoil exposed from the old Auchenharvie Pit No.5.

The 1860 edition of the OS 6-inch map marks a sluice at a site close to the old Stevenston coal pits, this being the eastern end of the canal navigation.

[22] The old coal yard and canal basin site remain as open ground and a pair of old gatepiers at the boundary of the railway may relate to the waggonway that ran down to the harbour.