Cheaply built and ungraded, and using poor quality locomotives, services on the line were very slow, initially limited to 5 miles per hour (8 km/h).

In the early 1870s he decided to build a light railway to carry freight from his estates in Buckinghamshire to the A&BR's line at Quainton Road.

[note 2] The MR leased the Brill Tramway from 1 December 1899,[1] although the line continued to be owned by the O&ATC.

[15] The station was initially built with a single low wooden platform, primarily intended for loading and unloading freight.

[16] Limited by poor quality locomotives and the bumpy, cheaply laid track which followed the contours of the hills, trains ran very slowly in the area; in 1882 trains took 20 minutes to travel the short distance from Quainton Road to Westcott, and 50 minutes from Westcott to Brill.

Following the 1899 transfer of services to the Metropolitan Railway, the station was served by four trains per day in each direction until closure in 1935.

[19] As with all employees on the line, staff at the station were contractually obliged to "devote themselves exclusively to the service, attend regularly during the appointed hours and to refrain from using improper language, cursing or swearing".

[13] A small gasworks a short distance to the south of Westcott station opened in 1889 to provide power to Waddesdon Manor and to other buildings on the Rothschild's estate.

In 1926 the gasworks closed and was replaced by an electrical generator elsewhere on the Waddesdon Manor grounds, and the track of the spur was removed.

[23][24] Frank Pick, managing director of the Underground Group from 1928 and the Chief Executive of the LPTB, saw the lines beyond Aylesbury to Brill and Verney Junction as having little future as financially viable passenger routes,[25] concluding that over £2000 (about £180,000 in 2025) would be saved simply by closing the Brill Tramway.

[10][20] Upon the withdrawal of London Transport services the lease expired and the railway and stations reverted to the control of the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad Company.