Ambarawa was a city that was used for military purposes during the Dutch colonial administration and not far from this station, there's Fort Willem I, known as Benteng Pendem by locals.

The colonial government of the Dutch East Indies under the command of Governor-General L. A. J. Baron Sloet van de Beele ordered the construction of a new railway station to facilitate the mobilization of Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops from and to Semarang.

This line connected the Dutch East Indies military stronghold in Magelang city with Fort Willem I in Ambarawa, and it was finished on 1 February 1905.

[10] The 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge line towards Djocja Toegoe (Yogyakarta) (runs roughly south-west from Ambarawa) was of particular interest because it contained sections of rack railway between Jambu and Secang which have 6.5% gradient, the only such operation in Java.

This line beyond Bedono closed in the early 1970s after it was damaged in an earthquake, but had already lost most of its passenger traffic to buses on the parallel road.

The line from Kedungjati (runs east initially from Ambarawa) survived into the middle 1970s but saw very little traffic near the end, not least because it was far quicker to travel more directly by road to Semarang.

The 0-10-0RT E10 class, PNKA E10 60, which was originally locale to West Sumatra in the 1960s for coal transports, was brought to Java for repair and later returned again as excursion train at Sawahlunto, and a Mogul Hartmann 2-6-0T C1218 (ex-SS 457) which was restored to working order in 2006, but transferred to Solo to working as excursion train as the request of Surakarta city government, named Sepur Kluthuk Jaladara.