London and North Western Railway

The London and North Western Railway, styled “the Premier Line”, was for most of its existence the dominant company on the West Coast route out of London. Before the 1923 Grouping it was the largest joint-stock company in Britain, measured by capital, and it was proud of the fact. Its headquarters were at Euston and its principal works at Crewe, where it built the great majority of its own locomotives. Though the company vanished into the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923, its engineering and its main line remained at the centre of British railways in 1960.

The Premier Line

The company was formed in 1846 by the amalgamation of the Grand Junction, London and Birmingham, and Manchester and Birmingham railways, bringing together the earliest trunk routes of the Midlands and the North West under one management. From that base it grew into the largest joint-stock company in Britain before 1923, working the West Coast Main Line from Euston northwards through Rugby, Crewe, and Preston towards Carlisle. Beyond Carlisle it did not run its own trains; the West Coast route into Scotland was worked in partnership with the Caledonian Railway, whose engines took Anglo-Scottish expresses forward to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, and Aberdeen.

Amalgamation and Grouping

On 1 January 1922, a year ahead of the general Grouping, the London and North Western amalgamated with its long-standing rival and neighbour, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, the enlarged company keeping the North Western name. Twelve months later, at the Grouping of 1923, that combined undertaking became a constituent of the new London Midland and Scottish Railway, the largest of the Big Four. The North Western’s main line, its works at Crewe, and much of its operating practice passed into the LMS, and Crewe went on to become the principal locomotive works of the whole group.

A big-engine tradition

The North Western built a reputation, not always deserved, for a “big engine” policy, and its Crewe-built express classes were among the best known of the pre-Grouping period. Under F.W. Webb and then his successors C.J. Bowen-Cooke and others came the four-cylinder Precursor, George the Fifth, and Claughton designs, which worked the heaviest Euston expresses in the years before 1923. The company’s lined black locomotive livery was distinctive enough to earn its own nickname, “blackberry black”. The detailed histories of these classes are set out in the RCTS Locomotives of the LMS series and in the Awdry Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies.

Lineage to 1960

The line of descent is straightforward. The London and North Western passed into the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923, and at nationalisation in 1948 the LMS lines out of Euston became the core of the London Midland Region of British Railways. In 1960 the old North Western main line was still the busiest of the West Coast routes, and it was about to be transformed by the electrification then under way between Euston, Crewe, and Manchester. The branch and secondary mileage inherited from the company fared less well; much of it was closed in the reshaping of the following decade, described in the closures section. For the other companies that made up the group, see the full list of constituents.