The route escaped complete closure in the 1960s mainly because places on the line have relatively poor road connections.

Beer Alston station was opened for passengers on 2 June 1890 by the Plymouth, Devonport and South Western Junction Railway as an intermediate station on that company's line from Lydford to Devonport,[1] which – being in effect an extension of the London and South Western Railway's main line from London Waterloo station to Lydford, enabling the LSWR to reach Plymouth independently of the Great Western Railway – was immediately leased to the LSWR.

However, in 1897, the railway authorities of the time decided that this name promoted an unrefined image of the village due to the association with beer, and therefore changed the name to Bere Alston in 1898.

In 2023 there are nine services each way on Mondays to Fridays, eight on Saturdays and five on Sundays (with an extra evening trip from May to early September).

[7] There have also been proposals put forward to reopen the entire route through to Okehampton and Exeter St Davids as a diversionary/relief route to maintain the rail link between Plymouth and Cornwall and the rest of the UK should the coastal main line via Dawlish be blocked by bad weather, as was the case in early 2014.