The Derbyshire and Staffordshire extension of the Great Northern Railway was an English railway network built by the GNR to get access to coal resources in the area to the north and west of Nottingham. The Midland Railway had obstructed the GNR in its attempts to secure a share of the lucrative business of transporting coal from the area, and in frustration the GNR built the line. The line was forked: it reached Pinxton in 1875 and a junction with the North Staffordshire Railway at Egginton, approaching Burton on Trent in 1878. The line cut through Derby, resulting in considerable demolition of housing there.
West of Derby the line was primarily agricultural; thoughts that a long-distance connection might build up using the line were over-optimistic, although a limited long-distance goods traffic did run. The GNR served holiday resorts on the East Coast of England, and a considerable excursion and holiday traffic from Derby and Nottingham was developed.
After World War I a slow decline set in, affecting both passenger and goods traffic, and the passenger service west of Derby was discontinued in 1939. The Nottingham to Derby passenger service was withdrawn in 1964. Freight business had run down gradually, and that too ceased completely in 1968. After closure to revenue traffic, part of the line was later used as an experimental test track.
Nottingham railways
The first railway in Nottingham opened in 1839 when the Midland Counties Railway inaugurated a line from Derby. In 1844 the Midland Counties Railway amalgamated with others and formed the Midland Railway. The MR built a new station at Nottingham on the present-day site, opening it in 1848, and the company expanded considerably in the following years, and for some time was the dominant railway company in the general area.Robin Leleux, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume IX: The East Midlands, David & Charles Publishers, Newton Abbot, 1976, , pages 115 to 117
The mineral and commercial resources of Nottingham and its environs were attractive to other railways, and the Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway opened an east–west line from Grantham to a junction at Colwick, east of Nottingham, in 1850. It made a junction with the Midland Railway at Colwick and relied on the MR for access to Nottingham. The Ambergate company had been conceived to connect the manufacturing districts of Manchester and Lancashire with the Eastern Counties and Boston docks, but the ambitious scheme never achieved the funding it would need, and it was cut back.Leleux, pages 123 to 125
In 1852 the Great Northern Railway reached Grantham and made a junction with the Ambergate company there. A contractor had worked the Ambergate line at first, but now the GNR took over the operation. The Midland Railway went to great lengths to be obstructive to the GNR use of its line, in order to protect its near-monopoly. In 1857 the GNR opened its own station, London Road, at Nottingham, together with an independent line to the station from Colwick. In 1860 the GNR leased the Ambergate company for a term of 999 years.
Derby railways Derby had long been dominated by the Midland Railway,The North Staffordshire Railway approached, at Willington Junction, and the London and North Western Railway had its own goods depot in the town. its predecessors having opened their lines in 1839 and 1840.Mark Higginson, The Friargate Line: Derby and the Great Northern Railway, Golden Pingle Publishing, Mickleover, 1989, , pages 10 and 11 However the Midland Railway's commercial methods had been aggressive: there was considerable resentment in Derby at the Midland Railway exploitation of its monopoly position. If another large company were to open a line to the town, this would be a highly satisfactory development.
Haulage of coal to the south Conveying coal from northern coalfields to London to the southern counties was a huge operation, bringing in very considerable income. The GNR had access to collieries in South and West Yorkshire, but the Midland Railway and the GNR had a traffic sharing agreement in place, which required the GNR to pay significant toll for coal passing through Nottingham.Leleux, pages 125 to 130John Wrottesley, The Great Northern Railway: volume I: Origins and Development, B T Batsford Limited, London, 1979, , page 159 Finding this oppressive, the GNR tried in 1862 to get a line from Colwick to Codnor Park, where there was a huge ironworks, already long established, coupled with coal and iron mines dominated by the Butterley Company. The line would have extended directly westward from the GNR terminus at Nottingham (London Road) through Lenton and Radford. However the Midland Railway offered a new traffic agreement which appeared to be equitable to the GNR, and was accepted by them. In fact it stored up trouble for the future.Higginson, page 13 In 1868 the Midland Railway opened its independent line from Bedford to London; hitherto it had relied on running over the GNR main line between Hitchin and London. Now no longer beholden to the GNR, it took a tougher line than ever in the Nottingham area, ending the traffic-sharing agreement. Shortly a ruinous rates war followed, and on 2 April 1871 the GNR was barred from running its coal trains through the Midland lines at all. Faced with a massive loss of income, the GNR was spurred to making its own line into the Derbyshire coalfield.John Wrottesley, The Great Northern Railway: volume II: Expansion and Competition, B T Batsford Limited, London, 1979, , page 14
Authorisation of GNR line This scheme was to be much more ambitious than the 1862 plan, designed to reach as far as Burton on Trent. As the GNR prepared the necessary parliamentary bill, the Midland saw that its monopoly was now under threat, and offered to resume the previous arrangements at Nottingham, but this was too late: the GNR had had enough. Thus in 1872 the GNR proposed a line that would run north from Colwick, and then west to Kimberley. The northern route around Nottingham avoided crossing the inner area of Nottingham from east to west, and linked in with large, hitherto unexploited, coal reserves in the Bestwood estate of the Duke of St Albans. Nevertheless, the new route had engineering challenges of its own. Just west of Kimberley, the line was to divide, one arm running north to Codnor Park and Pinxton, paralleling the Midland Railway Erewash Valley line. The other arm would continue westward through Ilkeston to Derby and Burton on Trent. From Burton, GNR trains would be able to reach Stafford using running powers over the North Stafford Railway. This westward connection would enable a route for outward mineral flows as an alternative to running through Colwick. The terrain west of Ilkeston was agricultural rather than mineral-bearing. The planned route involved prodigious engineering challenges and steep gradients, as more convenient alignments were already occupied by the Midland Railway.Wrottesley, volume II, page 16
The line was to cut directly through Derby, requiring the demolition of many slum properties. Politically and commercially influential people in the town were favourable to the GNR, but it is suggested that there was some naivety in the easy approval of the GNR's intentions.Higginson, page 16 The project was authorised on 25 July 1872 by the (35 & 36 Vict. c. cxxxix);Higginson, page 22 in addition to the main goods depot off Friar Gate, a subsidiary yard was planned in Duke Street, giving access to a centre of industrial activity there. This was authorised in 1874, and involved a northward spur running down from the main line at Darley Lane Junction, some way north east from Friargate, to a shunting neck on the riverside. From here a southward reversal was necessary to reach the goods yard itself.Higginson, page 20
Construction and first openings
The first construction was concentrated on the route to Pinxton, the northern arm of the Y-shaped route, turning north at Awsworth Junction, just beyond Kimberley. The mineral resources of the area it would serve would be much more lucrative than the agriculture in the western areas. At Colwick a large triangle of lines was created, forming junctions with the Grantham line at Colwick West and East Junctions, coming together at North Junction. Colwick was planned to be the collection point for loaded and empty wagons in connection with the colliery traffic, and an engine shed and sidings for 650 full wagons and 500 empties were laid out there; cottages were erected for the staff.
The line was difficult to construct; earthworks were heavy, especially between Bulwell and Kimberley. There was a tunnel long at Mapperley, and Giltbrook Viaduct, high with 43 arches crossing the Midland Railway west of Kimberley, a viaduct crossing another Midland branch at Bulwell, and Watnall tunnel, , east of Kimberley.Wrottesley, volume II, pages 53 to 57
The line from Colwick junctions to Pinxton opened on 23 August 1875 for mineral traffic. The great rock cutting at Kimberley was still not completed when passenger trains began, and there was only a single track for a distance of . Single-line working was set up temporarily, and blasting was stopped while trains were in the cutting. It was not until February 1877 that the second line was sanctioned for passenger traffic, making the route double throughout.
The search for coal traffic was successful: of coal were carried in the first six months. Passenger trains operated from Nottingham to New Basford from 1 February 1876, and passenger opening took place as far as Pinxton on 1 August 1876.Leleux, pages 125 to 130Leleux, pages 144 to 148 There were seven passenger trains each way on weekdays, increased to nine each way on weekdays and three each way on Sundays. The company gave an undertaking to the Board of Trade inspecting officer that passenger trains would be worked by tank engines; this avoided the necessity of providing a turntable. Almost immediately after opening a man was struck and killed by a goods engine running tender-first, so a turntable was installed there and a small engine shed built.
Derby and Burton branch The continuation of the Derby part of the line, from Awsworth Junction to Derby and Burton-on-Trent was started in 1875. Beyond Awsworth junction there were two tunnels, Morley () between West Hallam and Breadsall, and Mickleover (). There were 11 viaducts including Derby Town viaduct, long. Bennerley Viaduct at Ilkeston was an exceptional structure:
Bennerley Viaduct was one of several wrought iron railway viaducts built in the short period when this material had largely superseded cast iron and before it was in turn superseded by steel. Now Bennerley is one of the only two remaining viaducts of this type (the other is at Meldon Viaduct in Devon). It strides for a quarter of a mile across the flat floor of the Erewash valley on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border, having 16 Warren girder spans of 77 feet mounted on tubular piers. The piers each comprise a group of 10 vertical wrought iron tubes, made up of quadrants with continuous longitudinal riveted flanges, with an additional raking tube at each side and with wrought-iron bolted cross-bracing, standing on concrete bases capped with bricks and gritstone. The piers support four lines of Warren girders, 8 feet deep. The decking is of corrugated troughs, which halved the quantity of ballast needed, at an almost constant height of 56 feet above the ground, surmounted by lattice parapets 26 feet apart. At the west end of the Warren spans are three iron girder spans, on brick piers... The GNR Chief Engineer at the time was Richard Johnson and the contractors Eastwood Swingler & Co. of Derby.E A Labrum (editor), Civil Engineering Heritage: Eastern and Central England, Thomas Telford Publishing, London, 1994, , pages 27 and 28