London & Birmingham Railway

London & Birmingham Railway

London & Birmingham Railway coat of arms on the original Euston station gates displayed at the National Railway Museum in York
Dates of operation	1833–1846
Successor	London and North Western Railway
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was an early railway company in the United Kingdom from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR).

The 112-mile (180 km) railway line which the company opened in 1838 between London and Birmingham was the first intercity line to be built into London. It is now the southern section of the West Coast Main Line.

The line was engineered by Robert Stephenson. It started at Euston Station in London, went north-north-west to Rugby, where it turned west to Coventry and on to Birmingham. It terminated at Curzon Street Station, which it shared with the Grand Junction Railway (GJR), whose adjacent platforms gave an interchange with full connectivity (with through carriages) between Liverpool, Manchester and London.

The railway engineer John Rennie proposed a railway line from London to Birmingham in 1823, and formed a company to build it by a route through Oxford and Banbury, a route later taken by the Great Western Railway.

Soon afterwards a rival company was formed by Francis Giles whose line would have been through the Watford Gap and Coventry. Neither company obtained backing for its scheme, and in late 1830 the two companies decided to merge.