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.

[1] In 1829 a rival company was formed by Francis Giles who proposed building a line through Watford Gap and Coventry.

The new company appointed Robert Stephenson chief engineer, and after preparing a detailed survey, he chose the route through Watford Gap, largely to avoid possible flooding from the River Thames at Oxford.

[1] The prospectus for the London and Birmingham Railway offered the following inducements to potential investors:[1] First, the opening of new and distant sources of supply of provisions to the metropolis; Second, Easy, cheap and expeditious travelling; Third; The rapid and economical interchange of the great articles of consumption and of commerce, both internal and external; and Lastly, the connexion by railways, of London with Liverpool, the rich pastures of the centre of England, and the greatest manufacturing districts; and, through the port of Liverpool, to afford a most expeditious communication with Ireland.The company was created with an initial capitalisation of £5,500,000.

The anatomist Sir Astley Cooper was also in attendance, intent on preventing the new railway from cutting across his Gadebridge Estate.

"[4] The L&BR company's first application for an act of Parliament to construct the line was rejected in 1832, due to pressure from landowners and road and canal interests.

[5] In particular, he suggested that the effort to build the Great Pyramid of Giza amounted to the lifting of 15,733,000,000 cu ft (445,500,000 m3) of stone by 1 foot (0.305 m).

The railway, excluding a long string of tasks (drainage, ballasting, and so on) involved the lifting of 25,000,000,000 cu ft (710,000,000 m3) of material reduced to the weight of stone used in the pyramid.

[7] It has often been claimed that initially, owing to the lack of power available to early locomotives,[9] trains from Euston were cable-hauled up the relatively steep incline to Camden by a stationary steam engine.

The railway opened from Euston on 20 July 1837; the stationary engines and rope haulage did not commence until 27 September, and handled all trains from 14 October 1837.

By the end of the L&BR's separate existence in July 1846, the total stock was about 120 locomotives; some six-wheeled engines had been acquired, but some of these proved inferior to the original four-wheelers.

The "first-class" stations (served by all trains) were at Watford, Tring, Leighton, Wolverton, Blisworth, Weedon, Rugby and Coventry.

The L&BR purchased the Trent Valley Railway in 1846 on behalf of the LNWR; this fifty-mile (80 km) line connected Rugby on the L&BR with Stafford on the Grand Junction Railway thus creating a more direct line from London to Liverpool and Manchester by avoiding the original route through Birmingham.

On the closure of Curzon Street as a passenger station, the site became the London and North Western Railway goods depot (Birmingham) and became fully operational in 1865.