George Stephenson surveyed the route for the North Midland Railway between Derby and Leeds in the 1830s.

He formed George Stephenson & Company in 1837 and built a colliery and coke ovens at Clay Cross which opened in 1840.

The company continued to develop its mining interests and in 1918 it purchased the Overton Estate at Fallgate with the aim of extracting minerals.

Instead in 1920 H. F. Stephens, the consulting engineer for the line, proposed building the entire railway to 2 ft gauge.

The line was built using surplus equipment from the War Department Light Railways.

All passenger services were withdrawn in 1936, but the four large bogie carriages built by Gloucester RC&W survived through WW2, and all ended up as stands on the Works bowling green.

Most of the rail remained in place through October of that year when a last inspection trip was made.

The problem with this route was the Chesterfield Road, now the A61, and crossing it required a steel girder bridge spanning 45 feet.

The height had to be 16 feet above road level, which required a half-mile long approach embankment to be built.

The bridge and embankment were the only major pieces of engineering on the entire route between Clay Cross and Ashover.

At this point the line was still continuing southwards, but soon swung north-westwards again to follow the picturesque course of the River Amber as far as Ashover.

[6] In 1940, the wooden shelter was destroyed in a gale, and the pieces were used to construct a small store-shed at the back of the Clay Cross locomotive shed.

It was located about a quarter of a mile from the main street in Clay Cross, near the Royal Oak public house.

The timetables with the main line did not always coincide, and ALR trains sometimes had to wait for nearly half an hour.

The station had a wooden platform and a telephone box, a platelayers' cabin and a coal office.

Some time before its closure, the telephone was moved from the box into the office, as coal sales were initially good, but soon deteriorated.

There was also a coal sales depot, and in 1927, a limestone dust grinding plant was built.

However, due to repeated complaints by local residents, the plant was dismantled and moved to the Clay Cross Works.