A short section of the line at Kirkby Stephen East station has been restored by the Stainmore Railway Company.

A rival scheme, the Yorkshire & Glasgow Union Railway, left the ECML at Thirsk, crossed the Pennines to Hawes, then Kirkby Stephen, Appleby and so reached Clifton.

However, it would have cost £35,000 to pass through the estate of the Duke of Cleveland between Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle, and it was a condition of the enabling Act that work on the two lines must be simultaneous.

[2][3] In summer 1850 Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan discovered a seam of iron ore at Eston, North Yorkshire.

By 1851 Derwent Iron had opened a mine in the area and began moving ironstone 54 miles (87 km) to Consett.

[5] In the early 1850s this ore was travelling the long way round via Newcastle and Carlisle from the Barrow-in-Furness area, and Durham coke was returning.

[6] The ceremonial cutting of the first sod for the SD&LUR was at Kirkby Stephen on 25 August 1857, and that for the EVR was at Appleby on 28 July 1858.

[8] Bouch had laid out an economical route that followed the contours and avoided tunnels, but there were formidable gradients up to the 1,370 feet (420 m) high Stainmore Summit.

[13] Kirkby Stephen became a junction station when the EVR opened to mineral traffic on 8 April 1862 and passengers began to be carried on 9 June 1862.

Up to 50 empty wagons could be managed on the return journey, the assisting locomotive then running light from the summit to Barnard Castle.

[28] Local passenger trains were withdrawn between Kirkby Stephen and Tebay on 1 December 1952,[21] although steam-hauled summer Saturday services from the north-east to Blackpool continued to use the route until the end of the 1961 holiday season.

[31] The passenger service was withdrawn on the remaining section of the former SD&LUR between Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle on 12 June 1962.

[32] In 1963 Dr Beeching published his report "The Reshaping of British Railways", which recommended closing the network's least used stations and lines.

They have re-instated a short section of the former SD&LUR line west of the main station building, which has also been restored by volunteers.

Public passenger services were launched in August 2011 as part of a Stainmore 150 gala, which celebrated 150 years since the SD&LUR was opened.