[3] Initially, Dry Rigg supplied flagstone to the towns and cities across Northern England,[4] though most was used locally around the area.

[8] The stone worked at Dry Rigg is part of the Horton Formation, a gritstone laid down in the Silurian period, and typically rates at 65 in its PSV.

Aggregate from Dry Rigg has been used for surfacing runways at Manchester Airport and the Falkland Islands, both carriageways of the M6 at Tebay in 1971, the Newbury Bypass in Berkshire, and at airstrips in the Orkney Isles.

This allows for half the output from Arcow and Dry Rigg to be railed away from the quarries rather than trucks on the roads through the dales.

The opening of the rail link is estimated to have cut an annual average of 16,000 lorry journeys from the local road system.

[23] The quarry lies adjacent to Swarth Moor SSSI, a bog moorland that was previously cut for fuel.