From Roxley Game Laboratory:
Brass: Birmingham is an economic strategy game sequel to Martin Wallace’s 2007 masterpiece, Brass. Birmingham tells the story of competing entrepreneurs in Birmingham during the industrial revolution, between the years of 1770 and 1870. As in its predecessor, you must develop, build, and establish your industries and network, in an effort to exploit low or high market demands.
This is a finely brewed, full, standalone sequel to the original game. The dynamic board setup makes each game unfold completely differently, while the core rules stay true to the original. The game’s new canal/rail scoring creates tactics in where you place them. Birmingham features new actions, mechanics, and strategies to discover, and the 
The game is played over two halves: the canal era (years 1770-1830) and the rail era (years 1830-1870). To win the game, score the most VPs. VPs are counted at the end of each half for the canals, rails and established (flipped) industry tiles.
Birmingham features dynamic scoring canals/rails. Instead of each flipped industry tile giving a static 1 VP to all connected canals and rails, many industries give 0 or even 2 VPs. This provides players with the opportunity to score much higher value canals in the first era, and creates interesting strategy with industry placement.
Iron, coal, and cotton are three industries which appear in both the original Brass as well as in Brass: Birmingham.
