The line ran for 5 miles, from the old harbour at Portreath, east through Scorrier, to the mines at Poldice. It had no statutory title as it was privately built, and the few nineteenth century newspaper references simply refer to ’the tramway’. However, in a ledger of its owners [Cornwall Record Office SHM1423] it is clearly labelled The Portreath Tram Road.
Remarkably, the line was directly inspired by Richard Trevithick’s historic trip on the Merthyr Tramroad in 1804. The first plate was laid in 1809 and it opened, almost certainly, in 1812 to North Downs, not far from Scorrier, and extended to Crofthandy, near St Day, about 1818. It was much used until stoppage at Poldice and adjacent mines in about 1864. It fizzled out about 1880, Symons "Gazetteer of Cornwall" in 1884 recording that it was not much used and in a dilapidated state.
The name ‘Poldice Tramway’ seems to have occurred in print first in David St. John Thomas’s ‘Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: The West Country Vol. 1’ in 1960, and Bertram Baxter perpetuated it in ‘Stone Blocks and Iron Rails, 1966’. The best history of the line is in D. B, Barton’s ‘Essays in Cornish Mining History: 2 [1971]’, albeit with a very few errors, and the history has recently been brought up to date in the light of recent research and more information in The Journal of the Trevithick Society, volume 48, 2021.