London Midland Steam Locomotives, volume 1, hardback

Last Updated on April 23, 2026

London Midland Steam Locomotives, volume 1, hardback.

INTRODUCTION

introduction

At the grouping of Britain’s railways in 1923, the newly formed London Midland & Scottish Railway found itself with over 10,000 steam locomotives of very widely assorted designs, parentage and purpose.

At Nationalisation in 1948 the company still had nearly 8,000 but by then there were only something like a 100 different classes left as against the myriad that had existed 25 years earlier. By the early 1950’s on the Region, there was still something like 70 different classes remaining and these included not only engines built by the LMS itself but ex-Lancashire & Yorkshire, Caledonian, Highland and Furness types, as well as the obvious ones from the London & North Western and Midland Railways plus their earlier constituent lines such as the North London and London Tilbury & Southend.

Classifying locomotives as 3F, 4P or 5MT, etc. was an ideal arrangement from the operating standpoint but, to other than the specialist, it was often not apparent that Class 3F for example consisted of at least ten entirely different sub-classes which in turn also embraced several variations, of either major or minor importance. The general classification 2P involved some eight different types and even the ubiquitous Class

5 MT included three different classes plus many varieties under the one umbrella. This volume, the first of two, illustrates at least one example of each class still working on the London Midland in the 1950’s and in addition includes the majority of the varieties. Humbler and less well-known classes as well as those which were confined to working in more remote parts of the Region have deliberately been given greater prominence than the bigger and more popular wide-ranging

Or

express types which are already adequately recorded elsewhere. On a similar basis, the short selection of locomotive workshop scenes at the conclusion of Volume 2 concentrates elsewhere than the well-known localities of Derby or Crewe.

The illustrations are larger than has been seen before in a publication of this type and should appeal to railway modellers and LMS aficiona-dos, plus those who just like to feast their eyes on the locomotive power variety that existed in the final decade of steam on British Railways. The photographs herein were taken in the 1950’s before the change to dieselisation and were captured, in the main, whilst on shed. The locations are from as far north as Inverness and as far south as Templecombe such was the size of the ex-LMSR system. This volume contains the locomotives numbered from 40000 to 47999; the remainder, from 48000 onwards, will be found in Volume 2.

This book was previously for sale at Margot’s Books. The shop is now closed — this post is kept as an archive record only.