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The station is on the West Coast Main Line and serves both Birmingham International Airport, and the National Exhibition Centre. The railway station lies next to the M42 motorway. The 'International' in its name refers to the airport, not to an international railway service. The station opened in 1975 and has regular train services between Birmingham and London.
A maglev service ran from the airport terminal to the railway station from 1984 until 1995. The train "flew" at an altitude of 1.5cm over a track 600 metres in length. It operated for nearly eleven years, but was scrapped because spare parts for the system were no longer available. It was replaced by a bus. More recently, a pair of vehicles which are, effectively, cable cars runing on railway tracks, have used the old maglev route.