I am in the middle of rebuilding my layout. I play on making it a fanticy but I had a ROUGH idea for it. I live in a town in Illinois. but I have Europe roots. (Germany, Sweden, Chez, English, Exc. exc. exc.) so I was wondering. what kind of gear did the LNER use for line mantinance, snow removal, accident clean-up and so forth. Also, did different locomotives come from different railways? (scotish engines on british rails, GWR engines on scotish lines Exc. ) I also have some american engines to use. I also was going to have it in a transion era. so If anyone wants to help, please do.
The LNER “period” is accurately defined, fom 1 January 1923 until 31 December 1947, twenty four years exactly. Effectively LNER locomotives continued in service on the nationalised British Railways until 1965 or so, another eighteen years. The “transition Era” in England was 1958 to 1968 when steam was replaced.
The LNER operated the East Coast lines north from London through to Scotland (Edinburgh) and on to Fort William and other points in the north of Scotland.
If you are interested in the transition era, you should buy models lettered for British Railways. These locomotives were painted a darker green than used by the LNER itself. Bachmann make an extensive range under their “Branch Line” brand. These are generally good quality and are very accurate in finish and colour. Hornby have a similar range. Bachmann have a code identifying the appropriate era for a model, and produce models suitable for LNER, British Railways (early and late).
British models are made to a scale of 1:76 in OO scale rather than the 1:87 HO scale used in the USA. However, since the prototypes are generally smaller, the clearances needed are much the same. See
British freight trains generally used small four wheel wagons, but suitable models of most items are available for any era.
Snow removal usually used small locomotive fitted ploughs although a few separate (vee-type)ploughs mounted on old locomotive tenders were used. Because the UK is a relatively small island, there was rarely very deep snow owing to the effect of the Gulf Stream. Accident clearup used large cranes, built by Cravens or
For the exercise, I tried a number of searches and came to no avail. Contacting Brian McDermott through mremag.com gave me the link to try LNER Society in Google. The link was
I’d agree that you need to do a bit of research here, so that you understand more of how railways operated in Britain - for example, all four (LMS, SR, GWR, LNER) were amalgamated into “British Railways” when they were nationalised in 1948. Post-nationalisation, there were some instances of, for example, LNER locos being transferred to other regions. And although the GWR largely served London and the SW, there was a very rare but true instance where a few of their tank locos were transferred to the far north of Scotland.
Most importantly, however, I think you need to grasp the geography and make-up of Great Britain, or, to call it its other name, the United Kingdom. Scotland is part of the UK. Too many people still seem to think it’s “Scotland in England”, or that it is not part of Britian. England is but one of four (albeit the largest) countries which comprise the UK - the other three being Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, plus other places like the Isle of Man, Channel Islands etc.
Good luck.
Brian (A Scot who has lived in England since 1984)
which is the British Railway Modellers of North America. A friend of mine who belngs to the Australian chapter recommends it for a heap of information!
The London & North Eastern was a ‘merger’ of several railroads, so it would have engines from all the companies that went into it, at least in it’s early days…if that’s what you mean by “different locomotives (from) different railways”?? Unlike now with diesels in the US, you wouldn’t normally see ‘run thru’ trains where engines from one railway would be used on a train on another railway.
Not sure how you’re going to mix US and UK engines and equipment, since you’re probably only going to find US stuff in HO and UK in OO - same gauge, different scales. During WW2 some US-built engines were delivered for use in the UK but they were built to British "outline’ (i.e. they looked like British engines, not American engines.) Some of these had “WD” in place of a railway name (for “War Department”) I believe.
Ex-pat from England here now living in Ohio. I too have 1/76 OO Hornby locos and rolling stock. I find that I run either HO or I remove everything from the layout and run my Hornby OO locos. I tried having transistion cars so I could run anything but it was more trouble than it was worth. Now it is one or the other.
In Scotland, the locomotives of local passenger and goods(freight) trains would have carried small snowploughs during late autumn (fall) winter and early spring. These would be generally like those carried on SP locomotives instead of pilots, but were sometimes in three pieces. This practice carried on into the diesel era.
These would be smaller locomotives of the 4-6-0 (Class B1) or 0-6-0 (Classes J38 and J39) types. These are LNER locomotive types that have been made by Bachmann. The V1/V3 2-6-2 Tanks might also have operated in areas requiring ploughs since many of these were used in Scotland (although generally in Edinburgh suburban (commuter) service). You might look at the ex LMS Class 5 4-6-0 made by Hornby that saw extensive use in rural Scotland, on former LNER lines after 1948.
The LNER made extensive use of the K2 and K4 2-6-0s in Scotland, and these would have carried snowploughs but as far as I know, only the larger K3 is (or was) available as a model (from Bachmann). This was very similar in appearance to the K4 so might be useful given that very few people seeing your layout would be familiar with this sort of detail.
Is this helpful? (Note that the 0-6-0 (tender) type was used as a main line locomotive, rather than as a shunter (switcher) even on passenger trains by the LNER and British Railways).
The LNER was an amalgamation of a number of smaller railways, and in the manner of British Railways built many of its own locomotives in its workshops.
The best known LNER workshops was in Doncaster, near Durham, that built by the Great Northern Railway, where most of Sir Nigel Gresley’s “Pacific” locomotives, including the A4 “Mallard” were built. A number of the earlier A1, later A3 4-6-2s were built by the private company, the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow as were a number of the B17 4-6-0s. The other major LNER locomotive workshop was that at Darlington, built by the North Eastern Railway, the other large company forming the LNER. There were others of course, the Great Eastern shops at Stratford near London and the Great Central works at Gorton. There were smaller workshops in Scotland, of course.
Many locomotives were completely rebuilt in these workshops, particularly Doncaster and Darlington, sometimes out of all recognition.
These seem to be disconnected questions, but I hope the answers are helpful.
Anyone have advice on building a steam engine? I am trying to build an LNER S1 they look like this picture.
Any Suggestions? there are no models of this engine avalible commercially. I checked. This has to be done on a buget. If I can do it for $200.00 dollars that is high enough. I plan on rebuilding them later down on the road.
Another Brit here, living in the US, this time in Illinois. Nothing terribly constructive to add to the conversation except that I rather enjoy running my Hornby and Bachmann OO scale stuff on my HO midwest layout.
