Last Updated on April 23, 2026
A History of the LMS
2. The Record-Breading Thirties 1931-39 O.S.Nock.
This is the second in the three-volume history of the LMS by O. S. Nock.
As readers of the first volume have com-mented, this is no dry treatise compiled from research into ancient records. This is a firsthand account of events and people written with the authority of an author whose own 20s and 30s coincided with the birth and growth of the LMS. With the readability which comes from practice – he has written more than 100 books – and with the flair for detail to fascinate the reader which has made him the doyen of railway writers.
The railways were grouped into the ‘Big Four’ in 1923 in the belief that ‘bigger is better’. The LMS was the biggest. The first volume told of its birth pangs in the struggle against the resistance to change and jealousies of the older companies, notably the Midland and LNW. A task made no easier by the slump of 1929-31.
This volume tells how the LMS succeeded in using its size to modernise and standard-ise itself into efficiency.
Locomotives,
coaches, wagons, roadmotors, docks, signal-ling, track, steamships – all were revitalised.
How by sheer will-power the LMS climbed out of the recession into the record-breaking years which preceded the war in 1939.
Read for yourself the exciting story of how the LMS uniquely demonstrated that bigger was better.
This book was previously for sale at Margot’s Books. The shop is now closed — this post is kept as an archive record only.
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