The largest of the ‘Big Four’ companies, many models have been made of LMS designs in ‘OO’. But TREVOR JONES argues there are still significant gaps which could be filled.
The London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) was the largest of the ‘Big Four’ companies set up in 1923, inheriting 10,400 locomotives from a dozen different companies.
The main constituents were the Midland Railway (MR), London & North Western Railway (LNWR), Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (LYR), Caledonian Railway (CR) and Glasgow & South Western Railway (GSWR). The largest of the smaller railways absorbed were the Highland, North Staffordshire and Furness Railways. This gave a great variety of locomotive types at Grouping.
Above: Caledonian Railway '72' 4-4-0 54482 and LMS ‘Black Five’ 4-6-0 44924 head a down coal train in the loop at Slochd summit in August 1959. W.J. Verden Anderson/Rail Archive Stephenson.
It wasn’t until Sir William Stanier came from the GWR in 1933 that the Derby influence was supplanted by Crewe and he started to produce a series of more powerful standardised locomotives to reduce the prominent double-heading still being practised. The only…
