The Little Eaton Gangway (the Derby Canal Railway) was a narrow gauge industrial plateway serving the Derby Canal at Little Eaton in Derbyshire.

In 1792, Benjamin Outram was asked to prepare plans for a broad canal from Swarkestone to Smithy Houses, near Denby, with a branch at Derby to the Erewash Canal at Sandiacre. The use of a tramway as an alternative was first proposed by William Jessop later that year. The Derby Canal Act of 1793 authorized a rail connection between the Derby Canal at Little Eaton and the collieries to the north. The tramway ran 6 km (4 miles) from the canal wharf to Smithy Houses and another 1.6 km (1 mile) further to Denby Hall Colliery. Further short branches served Salterwood North and Henmoor Collieries as well as the Denby Pottery.

Outram's original plan was for a conventional waggonway with wooden sleepers and oak rails reinforced with cast iron plates. However, by the time the railway was approved, Outram had decided to use the flanged rails with which his name has become associated. Outram was infuenced by Jessop, whose father had worked for Thomas Telford on the construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse, and by Joseph Butler, who had constructed a similar line in 1788 and who supplied the rails, rather than Outram's own works.

Both Outram and Jessop preferred stone blocks to sleepers. These were drilled with a 15 cm (six in) hole into which an oak plug was fitted. The rails, approximately three feet long and of L-shaped cross-section, were attached by means of spikes. The line was originally 1.01 m (3 ft 6 in)gauge, later increased to 1.22 m (4 ft).

The waggons were built at Outram's Butterley works and consisted of containers mounted loosely on a chassis, or tram, with four cast iron wheels. The container would be lifted off at Little Eaton and loaded complete into narrowboats or transferred to two-wheeled carts for carriage by road. The canal line from Little Eaton led to Gandy's Wharf in Derby for onward distribution through the canal network or by road. Probably the first instance of containerisation in the world.

The gangway and the Little Eaton line of the canal opened in 1795, the first load of coal from Denby being distributed to the poor of Derby. When the Midland Railway built its branch line to Ripley in 1856, it lost most of its trade, finally closing in 1908.

The trackbed was used for a new road, the A61, bypassing the old road through Coxbench. This, in turn, was superseded at the end of the twentieth century by the A38 trunk road, demoting it to the B6179. Thus there are three generations of highway side-by-side, plus the remains of the railway.

Remaining traces include a Wharf building, the easternmost arch of Jack O' Darley bridge and another two arch bridge over the Bottle Brook. A wagon from the gangway is on display at the National Railway Museum, with a replica at the Midland Railway Trust near Ripley.