Passing through the beautiful scenery on the border of Derbyshire and Staffordshire from the White Peak landscape of the limestone area surrounding Ashbourne to the grimmer Dark Peak of Buxton, the LNWR’s picturesque line from Ashbourne to Buxton has long been a favourite of railway historians and photographers. At its southern end, it made an end-on junction with a line from Uttoxeter built by the NSR, which has tended to be overlooked in other published works. This book redresses the balance by viewing the line as a whole.
The two lines were quite different in character. The earlier one from Uttoxeter was rooted in the railway mania of the mid-19th century. The later one from Buxton was built after the railway network of Great Britain had been largely completed in a period of consolidation when the speculative schemes of fifty years earlier had given way to strategic routes that filled in some of the last-remaining gaps on the railway map. Where the earlier line was built by navvies using only the most basic tools and equipment, the later line had the benefit of half a century of railway-building expertise. In historical terms, the line from Uttoxeter to Ashbourne is more contemporary with the original Cromford and High Peak Railway than the extension to Buxton, which largely superseded it.
