The Brill Tramway (1)

The Brill tramway was a 6 mile stretch of Private rail line, which linked the estate of the Duke of Buckingham with the national rail network at Quainton Road.

It was built in 1871 by the third Duke for horse trams to transport goods to and from his estate and the nearby village of Brill. The first passenger services ran a year later and soon the horses had been replaced by two locomotives.

The Duke had plans to enlarge the route and create a link between Aylesbury and Oxford. In anticipation, the tramway was renamed the Oxford and Aylesbury tramroad.

However an alternative route was chosen and the extension was never completed. In 1894 the Tramway became part of the Metropolitan Railway and was rebuilt in 1910 to enable the use of faster locomotives. However, the Tramway was losing money. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway became part of London transport. It seems that they could see no viable future for it and it was closed two years later.

All that now remains are the station buildings at Quainton Road, which now form part of the Buckinghamshire Railway centre.