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On March 1, 1882 the first train arrived in Birmingham on the newly completed Ft. Madison & Northwestern Railroad line, which was a narrow-gauge rail that at one time extended from Ft. Madison to Ottumwa. This small line was purchased by the Chicaco, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. By the time it changed to standard track in 1891, the route had become known as the "Peavine."

Several stations immediately popped up along the Peavine. The village of Zanesville came into being about 3 miles southwest of the present village of Stockport. From 1882 to 1901, a post office was established there under the official name McVeigh, so soon the settlement adopted that name. A general store and lumber yard operated until about 1900 in McVeigh.

Likewise, a small cluster of houses existed around a depot at Longview, located 2.5 miles northwest of Stockport. Meanwhile, Stockport was only a tiny, cross-roads settlement in 1881, and didn’t yet exist as a town.

The State of Iowa is said to have offered a $500.00 cash bonus should the railroad reach the settlement (that became Stockport) by January 1, 1882. When it appeared that railroad workers would be unable to meet the deadline, neighborhood men turned out to lay ties and rails so that this sum of cash could be collected. The cross-roads community of Stockport did not yet have a depot, therefore it did not grow.

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