Cardington station was opened by the Midland Railway in 1857 as part of its main line from Leicester to Hitchin, built to allow it a direct route to London without using rival London and Birmingham Railway metals but having running powers over the Great Northern main line from Hitchin to King's Cross.

However, when the Midland Railway later built its own route from Bedford to London St Pancras, the section between Bedford and Hitchin was demoted to a mere branch line, over which passenger traffic was minimal and services were reduced to a shuttle by 1880.

[4] The establishment of an airship factory in Cardington by Short Brothers during the First World War increased passenger and freight traffic through the station.

This continued after the war when the coalition government approved a project to build two large airships, the R100 and R101; the R101 was built at Cardington, the R100 in Yorkshire.

Traffic picked up again during the Second World War when the site became RAF Cardington particularly when troop specials were run to enable conscripts to travel forward to their basic training camps.