When the Stockton & Darlington Railway first opened on 10 October 1825, there were no official stations, as passenger trains were provided by independent coach operators who purchased a licence from the railway company to enable them to operate on the line.

[1] Tickets were sold by local publicans, and so it has been claimed that the Fighting Cocks public house, a coaching inn near where the railway crossed Rykeneild Street, could be one of the oldest surviving station booking office in the world.

As a result, a permanent station was opened during the 1830s (appearing in timetables by 1838), on the east side of the level crossing, to cater for this traffic.

[3] However the opening of this new route meant that Fighting Cocks was bypassed, and so a new station was provided at Dinsdale to replace it.

From this point on Fighting Cocks was only served by goods trains until it was closed completely as an economy measure in 1964.