Euston to Birmingham: 1837 to Rail Blue

The London & Birmingham Railway was the first intercity line in Britain to travel from London. Superbly engineered by Robert Stephenson, this early achievement of the railway age in Britain linked England’s second city Birmingham to the capital at Euston station and became part of what later came to be known as the West Coast Main Line. En route, the line travelled through Rugby and Coventry and terminated at Curzon Street station in Birmingham but by 1854 passenger services stopped at Birmingham New Street instead. The route soon became part of the London & North Western Railway, later absorbed into the London, Midland & Scottish Railway at the Grouping in 1923, before becoming part of British Railways in Nationalisation in 1948. Robert Hendry draws on his extensive collection of historical images to present a photographic portrait of the Euston to Birmingham route through the years up to the Rail Blue era of British Rail which ended in the 1980s.