[9] John Smeaton was the engineer employed by the Birmingham and Fazeley, but work did not start immediately, as he was also responsible for the Riders Green to Broadwaters line, which was completed first.

[10] The project did not go smoothly, as there were disputes between James Bough, the superintendent of the canal company, and Pinkertons, who were the civil engineering contractors employed to carry out the work.

[11] The company stopped paying Pinkerton in late 1788, as the costs were exceeding the original estimates, and the contract was taken away from them in February 1789.

Unhappy with the outcome, Pinkerton justified his position, but his remarks about John Houghton, the Company Clerk, were deemed to be libellous, for which he was fined and spent some time in prison.

[10] The benefits of the co-operation with the other canal companies were that when all the links were completed in 1790, it immediately generated a great deal of freight traffic.

This created problems, as the flights of locks at Aston and Farmer's Bridge became congested, and this became worse when the Warwick Canal built a junction onto the Digbeth Branch.

[15] In 1935 Birmingham Council gained powers to stop up the arm of the canal on the north east side of Summer Row for the development of a new civic centre and the widening of Great Charles Street.

[16] In 1962 Birmingham Council decided to fill in the arm of the canal which ran in Newtown Row, following the drowning of a boy the previous year.

[19] In 2022, work started on the "Scotland Works" site opposite Lock 1 of Farmer's Bridge Locks, a former glassworks that is being redeveloped into residential apartments named Lockside Wharf by Consortia Developments and Joseph Mews Property Group.

A short cut runs from near the end of the branch to the Grand Union Canal at Bordesley Junction.

Holborn Hill bridge carries the railway to Aston station over the canal, just before the bottom lock of the flight is reached.

Three more locks continue the descent at Minworth, and the character of the surroundings changes from an urban and industrial landscape to open countryside.

There is a short 57-yard (52 m) Grade II listed tunnel at Curdworth,[23] after which fields and flooded gravel pits line the canal.