Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway

The Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway (CK&PR) was an English railway company incorporated by Act of Parliament on 1 August 1861, to build a line connecting the town of Cockermouth with the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) West Coast Main Line at Penrith. Arrangements for the use of the stations at either end (Cockermouth was already served by the Cockermouth and Workington Railway (C&WR)) were included. Passenger and goods traffic was worked by the LNWR and mineral traffic by the North Eastern Railway, both of whom had shares in the company (the NER inheriting its holding from the , which had encouraged the promotion of the line). The line was 31 ¹⁄₂ miles (50.7 km) in length, and had eight intermediate stations.

From west to east:

The company had its immediate origins in a meeting at Keswick in September 1860 which agreed to promote a railway linking Keswick to existing railways at Cockermouth (to the West) and Penrith (to the East). A project for a railway linking the towns had been promoted during the Railway Mania, getting as far as a survey of the proposed route, but nothing had come of this (nor of a projected railway from Cockermouth to Windermere via Keswick). Consequently, a Keswick resident complained in 1857, "Here we are buried - shut out from the world, as it were - 15 hours from a morning paper while other people know at an instant what happens at the other end of the kingdom" However, the prospectus for the company argued, what would make the line profitable was not local traffic to Keswick, but potential two-way mineral traffic between the haematite orefield of West Cumberland and the coke-ovens of South Durham.

The project was supported by the London and North Western Railway (whose line would be joined at Penrith), and by the which had been behind a series of lines engineered by Thomas Bouch which together gave access from South Durham to the West Coast Main Line at Clifton just south of Penrith. The Cockermouth and Workington Railway, with which the CK&PR was to link at its western end, initially intended to support the CK&PR directly, but was not in a financial position to do so; instead many of the C&W directors took substantial shareholdings in the new line, with some sitting on its board. The company's Bill was unopposed, and its Act received its Royal Assent in August 1861.

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