I remember Ambergate station in the 1960s when it had six platforms, though not all of them were in use. Indeed, I photographed it by chance while on a bike ride when I was sixteen [Buyers’ remorse: British Railways Class 17 | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times], and I went back a couple of years later when a sunset provided appropriate lighting for a station in rapid decline.
In 1972-73 I was coming to the end of my time teaching at Bilborough Grammar School in Nottingham and beginning a long career of part-time adult-education lecturing for the University of Nottingham.
Through that winter and spring I left school promptly, took a bus to Nottingham station and caught a diesel rail-set that trundled over some of the oldest railway lines in the north Midlands – the original Midland Counties Railway (1839) to Derby, then north over the North Midland Railway (1840) to Ambergate, and from there on the little railway with the long name, the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock & Midland Junction Railway (1849) to Matlock.
The ponderous title of the company indicates an intention to connect the East Midlands with Manchester, but it only reached Rowsley on the doorstep of two ducal estates before running out of cash in 1849.
The title also indicates that the three railways which met at Derby had amalgamated in 1844 as the Midland Railway.
In the midst of the frantic competition between railway companies after the investment bubble known as the “Railway Mania”, the MBM&MJR became jointly leased by the Midland and its rival, the London & North Western Railway, which operated what we now call the West Coast Main Line from London to Scotland.
The L&NWR gave up its share of the lease after the Midland gained powers to build a competing line from its branch to Wirksworth.
Eventually, after the 6th Duke of Devonshire died and his successor didn’t want a railway running through his Chatsworth estate, the 8th Duke of Rutland was persuaded to allow a line tunnelling behind the back garden of Haddon Hall, and the railway was extended from Rowsley up the Wye Valley, first to New Mills and eventually on to Manchester.
The southern “Midland Junction” at Ambergate developed, in fits and starts, into a key connection for trains between Derby, Manchester and Sheffield.
An informative Wikipedia map [Ambergate junction – Ambergate railway station – Wikipedia] shows how the 1849 junction was west-to-north, and the south/north-west link was opened later, in 1863. A further south/north-east link, to allow expresses to overtake stopping trains, followed in 1876.
Another service began in 1875, providing passenger trains to Pye Bridge on the Erewash Valley line, part of which now operates as a heritage railway, Midland Railway (Butterley). (The MBM&MJRroute north of Matlock to south of Rowsley is also a heritage line, Peakrail.)
In the course of the nineteenth-century operational changes the station buildings were shifted around, until the triangular junction was provided with six platforms on a high embankment. The buildings were, of necessity, constructed of timber.
The station remained intact until all passenger services except the shuttle service to Matlock ended in 1968. Then, in 1970, the redundant platforms and all the timber buildings were taken down, and Ambergate passengers wait on the former up platform with the benefit of a bus shelter.
Ambergate had, along with Queensbury (closed 1955) and Shipley in West Yorkshire and Earlestown in Lancashire, the distinction of being a triangular station with six platforms.
