The Great Northern Railway had been attempting to build a connecting line between Gainsborough and Doncaster since 1847, but it was not until they obtained an Act of Parliament on 25 July 1864 that they were at last empowered to do so.

The station and the buildings were only just in Nottinghamshire, as the county border with Lincolnshire ran diagonally across the countryside, crossing the railway about halfway along the eastern siding.

[6] The building nearest the road was the Park Drain Hotel, which was completed in 1899 by George Dunston, a local colliery proprietor and mining engineer.

He had obtained a licence to serve alcohol in 1897, before construction had begun, which was granted on the basis that Park Drain would soon be the centre of an extensive coal mining operation.

It is unclear whether the station was in full operation at that time, since Dunston, in a speech which outlined plans for a mine and a large village or small town near the hotel, also mentioned that a number of his friends were missing from the dinner because the railway company would not stop the train on which they were travelling at Park Drain.