Introduction to the London Midland and Scottish Railway - Gateway to the LMS

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Gateway to the LMS
In 1923, the Railway companies of the United Kingdom were merged into four large companies, often known as the "Big Four". Apart from the duration of World War Two when the railways came under governmental control, these four companies ran the British railways until the beginning of 1948, when all the railways were nationalised to form British Railways. This site is dedicated to one of those companies, the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS).
  
The London Midland and Scottish Railway took over the operation of the midland and west coast lines, and often shared territory with the Great Western and London and North Eastern railways. It also ran railways in Northern Ireland.  The principal companies that made up the LMS are listed below.  
  
The story of the LMS seems to come in four parts. There is the period from 1923 to 1932, when the merging of such bitter rivals as the Midland Railway and the London & North Western Railway would be at its most visible in the Locomotive Department and would result in the stagnation of locomotive design and production. The next part would be from 1932-1939, when William Stanier would end the locomotive stagnation and LMS lines would see some ground-breaking designs of locomotive in use. Then comes World War II from 1939 to 1945, which put a hold on the advances of the previous decade, and finally 1945-1947, the period before the railways were nationalised, becoming British Railways.
  
I had planned to try and make this site more informative in time for the 100th anniversary of the LMS coming into operation in 2023, but as of 2019 this now looks unlikely.  I need to do more research and perhaps see if I can obtain images of items I cannot photograph myself, but at this point, I have other priorities, so perhaps I might aim for the 125 anniversary instead.

The site has been constructed with a view towards the non-railway visitor being able to understand the content with referring to other sources so I shall define railway terms where I think it might be necessary for those visitors.

Why "The Grouping"
Between 1914 and 1921, the railways of Britain had been "temporarily nationalised" in order to facilitate the war effort. It was felt that the railways could not be allowed to return to the state they were in before World War I; the question was, what should be done. The benefits of unified operation had been shown during the war, so should the railways be permanently nationalised?

It was decided to implement a compromise. The railways would remain in private hands, but instead of the 120 or so companies that existed before the war, only four would operate, with most of the existing railways  merging into one of these four (some would be joint ventures, a very few would remain independent). The 1921 Railways Act set out the way British railways would be run for 25 years and thus the "Big Four" came into being, effective 1st January 1923. However, it is  interesting to note that it could have been the "Big Six" as the government briefly toyed with the idea of making Scottish Railways a fifth company and merging the Midland and Great Central railways to form a sixth. This would have at least avoided the LMS being saddled with two bitter rivals (the Midland Railway and the London and North Western Railway), but at the end of the day, it was felt  that the Scottish railways would not make a profit by themselves, and so six became four.   The LMS mergers were somewhat against  government policy on railway mergers at the time as it was a case of several directly competing companies being merged rather than non-competing companies, which were permitted under legislation), thus creating a monopoly which the government at the  time was against. This was perhaps a contributing factor to the struggles of the company during its first years of existence.
  
The ultimate aim was to make the railways more efficient and to provide a standard method of charging. It was expected that  with intercompany rivalry reduced, surplus routes would be closed down, but ultimately, no significant action was taken in the Grouping  Era, and it was left to British Railways to do this. In general, the railways did not fare very well under grouping. Social and  economic changes meant that the railways were no longer as vital as they had been in the previous century, and although the railways  generally operated more efficiently, their financial performances during grouping were never brilliant. In some respects, the Railways Act actually hampered the railways, especially with regards to charging of freight services; the railways were often forced by law to carry goods that weren't profitable for them do so, something that the road haulage industry didn't have to contend with. The question of the success of the "Big Four" is still strongly debated today, especially since it seems that the current British railway  situation has reverted to a similar situation to pre-Grouping (it should be pointed out that the period of the "Big Four"'s existence  saw a global financial downturn and a global war, neither of which helped towards making this period of the railways a success).
  
The four railways were :
The Great Western Railway (GWR) - The only member of the "Big Four" that existed prior to The Grouping.
London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS)
London and North Eastern Railway (LNER)
Southern Railway (SR)
  
(abbreviations used throughout this site)
  
Formation Companies
The companies that formed the LMS in 1923 consisted principally of the :

Caledonian Railway (CR)
Furness Railway (FR)
Glasgow & South Western Railway (GSWR)
Highland Railway (HR)
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (LYR)
London & North Western Railway (LNWR)
Midland Railway (MR)
North Staffordshire Railway (NSR)
Shropshire Union Railways & Canal Co. (SUR)
Stratford-Upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway (SMJ)
  
The abbreviations in brackets are used throughout this site.
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