The Liskeard and Caradon Railway was built by the owners of the Liskeard and Looe Union Canal (opened 1828) to carry ore and granite from the Caradon area towards Looe. The line opened in 1844 and ran from the terminus of the canal at Moorswater near Liskeard to South Caradon in 1844, and on from Caradon to Cheesewring Quarry after 1846. By the late 1850s traffic had increased so much that the canal could not cope, and so the company replaced it with a railway, mostly built on the bed of the canal. This gave the railway a direct route to the port of Looe from the Cheeswring and Caradon Hill. Wagons were run down from the mines and quarries under gravity and then hauled back up by horses.
