The LPTB aimed to move away from freight operations and saw no way in which the rural parts of the MR could be made into viable passenger routes.

On 15 June 1839, entrepreneur and former Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham, Sir Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet, opened the Aylesbury Railway.

[8] Deeply in debt, the Grenvilles began to look for ways to maximise profits from their remaining farmland around Wotton, and to seek business opportunities in the emerging fields of heavy industry and engineering.

[3] On the death of his father on 29 July 1861, he became the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos,[6] and resigned from the chairmanship of the LNWR, returning to Wotton House to manage the family's remaining estates.

All goods to and from the Brill Tramway passed through Quainton Road, making it relatively heavily used despite its geographical isolation, and traffic increased further when construction began on Ferdinand de Rothschild's mansion of Waddesdon Manor.

The plan of extending the Brill Tramway to Oxford, which would have made Quainton Road a major junction station, was abandoned.

The MR rebuilt Quainton Road and re-sited it to a more convenient location, allowing through running between the Brill Tramway and the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway.

When the Great Central Railway (GCR) from the north of England opened, Quainton Road became a significant junction at which trains from four directions met, and by far the busiest of the MR's rural stations.

[19] The London and North Western Railway immediately began to operate a dedicated service from Quainton Road, with three vans per week of milk collected from the Wotton estate shipped to Broad Street.

[40] By the mid-1870s, the slow speed of the Aveling and Porter locomotives and their unreliability and inability to handle heavy loads were recognised as major problems for the Tramway.

[34][42] With trains now hauled by the Bagnall locomotive (the Kingswood branch generally remained worked by horses, and occasionally by the Aveling and Porter engines), traffic levels soon rose.

[44] Although the introduction of the Bagnall locomotives and the traffic generated by the works at Waddesdon Manor had boosted the line's fortunes, it remained in serious financial difficulty.

However, the A&B was in such a precarious financial position that any successful legal action against it would likely have forced its through Quainton Road to close, severing the Tramway's connection with the national network.

[48] Charles Pearson (1793–1862) had proposed the idea of an underground railway connecting the City of London with the relatively distant main-line termini in around 1840.

[55] The Act of Parliament authorising the scheme received the Royal Assent on 20 August 1883, and the new Oxford, Aylesbury and Metropolitan Junction Railway Company, including the Duke of Buckingham, Ferdinand de Rothschild and Harry Verney among its directors, was created.

[58] Despite the scheme's powerful backers, the expensive Muswell Hill tunnel deterred investors and the company found it difficult to raise capital.

[61] On 7 August 1888, less than two weeks before the authorisation was due to expire, the directors of the Oxford, Aylesbury and Metropolitan Junction Railway Company received the Royal Assent for a revised and much cheaper version.

Further Acts of Parliament were granted in 1892 and 1894, varying the proposed route slightly and allowing for its electrification,[66] but no work was carried out other than some preliminary surveying.

[24][68][note 7] The rebuilding of the Tramway greatly improved service speeds, reducing journey times between Quainton Road and Brill to between 35 and 43 minutes.

[17] While the line to Brill was being upgraded, the MR were rebuilding and re-siting Quainton Road as part of its improvement programme, freeing space for a direct link between the former A&B and the O&AT to be built.

[72] A curve between the former A&B and the Tramway opened on 1 January 1897, allowing through running without the need to turn the engine and carriages individually on the turntable for the first time.

[14] Although it served a lightly populated area, the opening of the GCR made Quainton Road an important junction station at which four railway lines met.

The GCR route to London ran over the MR from Quainton Road to London, and to reduce reliance on the hostile MR, GCR General Manager William Pollitt decided to create a link with the Great Western Railway and a route into London that bypassed the MR.[86] In 1899, the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway began construction of a new line, commonly known as the Alternative Route, to link the GWR at Princes Risborough to the GCR at Grendon Underwood, about three miles (5 km) north of Quainton Road.

Competition from the newer lines and from improving road haulage had drawn away much of the Tramway's custom in particular, and Brill trains would often run without a single passenger.

[92] Frank Pick, managing director of the Underground Group from 1928 and the Chief Executive of the LPTB, aimed to move the network away from freight services and concentrate on the electrification and improvement of the core routes in London.

[94] He saw the lines beyond Aylesbury via Quainton Road to Brill and Verney Junction as having little future as financially viable passenger routes.

[98] Late that evening, a two-coach staff train pulled out of Brill, accompanied by a band bearing a white flag and playing Auld Lang Syne.

A former London Transport building from Wembley Park was dismantled and re-erected at Quainton Road to serve as a maintenance shed.

[115] A number of former Ministry of Supply food warehouses in what is now the extended Down Yard have been converted for various uses by the Society, including storage and exhibition of rolling stock.

[119][120][needs update] Quainton Road Station was used for the filming location for the video for The Tourists' single So Good To Be Back Home Again in 1980.