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Creating a believable freelance pre-Group company


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The easy route is of course narrow gauge. Plenty of examples of models based on fictitious lines. Also plenty of scope for building lines in new places. For example, Skye had a couple of mineral lines but there were proposals for a more general purpose system.

 

Then there are the light railways, often but not always worked by an existing railway.

 

Something more mainstream is more difficult. But ... how about creating an extra South Wales valley or two with an independent company serving the coal mines there, along the lines of the other, varied, South Wales independants? Could be a good choice if one was interested in something Edwardian rather than earlier.

 

Cross-country lines similar to the Hull & Barnsley?

 

Or a cross-country joint line like the M & GN but, say, linking Coventry with Felixstowe?

 

Or suppose that the Midland and South Western Junction Railway was actually a joint line between the Midland and the South Western, rather like the Somerset and Dorset, using stock of either in its own livery?

Edited by NCB
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how about creating an extra South Wales valley or two with an independent company serving the coal mines there, along the lines of the other, varied, South Wales independants? Could be a good choice if one was interested in something Edwardian rather than earlier.

 

This is the premise for my 'Glamorgan Railway'. I have built a "history" for the line as a series of excerpts from a fictitious tome entitled "The Rise and Demise of the Glamorgan Railway - 1832 to 1913" by Dr. Ewan Husami. The part dealing with the purchase of the first locomotive is already elsewhere on the forum but I'll reprint it here.

 

Chapter 3: The Lines Are Laid

 

It was shortly after the series of unfortunate and highly unusual events (some have even said “suspicious”) outlined in the previous chapter that the new 4th Earl travelled to his estates near Manchester with his young bride. There he had his first personal experience of the new wonder, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. His predecessor in the title had voted against the construction of the line in the House of Lords much to his nephew’s chagrin.

 

Earl Robert immediately saw the possibilities that steam locomotion could provide for his growing business concerns in the coal and iron industries. He immediately contacted George Stephenson in Liverpool in regard to purchasing a locomotive. Stephenson was not really interested until a substantial sum of money was mentioned. George wrote to his son Robert in Newcastle-upon-Tyne the very same day. Unfortunately this correspondence has been lost to history but what is known is that Robert quickly completed a Northumbrian type 0-2-2 engine he was building for the L&MR and dispatched it by sea to South Wales within a fortnight of receiving the letter. The 0-2-2 locomotive was replaced by the new 2-2-0 type “PLANET” which was allocated the number 9 in the L&MR roster.  

 

The 0-2-2 that the Earl had purchased was of course the famous “VULCAN” which was to do so much in the initial construction phase of the railway. It also introduced the basic colour scheme used for the bulk of the existence of the line, namely the blue painted locomotives with red wheels.

 

The new engine was slightly different from ………………………    

 

This history gives explanations for the various engine and rolling stock purchases during the company's existence and for the development of the line from an internal estate system to a minor coal and iron main line. I chose a blue paint scheme with red wheels for the locos to contrast the liveries of TVR, RR, BR etc. Freight stock is mid grey with black ironwork with passenger stock in a basic Furness style.

 

The history of the line ends in 1913 with the collapse of the family fortunes. I chose this date as if the line had survived into the Great War it would have fallen under government control and possibly lasted until Grouping. Any viable parts of the line were snapped up by the rival companies and incorporated into their systems.

 

Dave R.  

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Another possible line that I have been long interested in, The Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway. Independent until grouping, but operated by GWR engines and stock from the outset. What if the company had sourced its own Locomotives and rolling stock? Red liveried perhaps?

 

Early days were interesting, with the GWR making much use of older, non-standard, locos from absorbed lines.

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Early days were interesting, with the GWR making much use of older, non-standard, locos from absorbed lines.

If you visit Scaleforum in Aylesbury come September you will see a model under construction. Afficionados have seen bits before, but this will be the first outing for all baseboards.

 

Dartmouth is a real town with a real station. Most historians believe that it never had track or trains. In my parallel universe, the Acts of Parliament of Mid 19th Century which enabled both the Totnes and Dartmouth Rly Co and the South Hams Rly Co actually led to the construction of both lines. If you read the wrong history books you will read that the slump of around 1860 prevented the Directors raising the share capital so both Companies failed.

 

We have recently learnt that banks can do no wrong so the 19th C slump was a myth.

 

The standard gauge line from Plymouth, promoted by LSWR, reached Dartmouth soon after the Broad Gauge line from Totnes, sponsored by South Devon Railway. Both lines were profitable until 1902 when a shipping disaster demolished the River Dart bridge from Dittisham to Greenway and severed the fast route via Churston to Newton. This led to closure by 1905.

 

Traces of the old line have been found with other evidence of its existence.

 

Much of the station’s and the trains’ character were derived from the sponsoring larger companies. Some locos were provided by Slaughter & Gruning (later becoming Avonside works) in Bristol, others by LSWR, SDR, and the Cornwall Railway.

 

Traffic on the lines was local passenger, through occasional Expresses to London and the Midlands to cater for the very new tourist market together with coal imported by sea for distribution in the S. Devon hinterland. A major generator of goods traffic in and out was the local engineering company, Newcomen Gruning who were maintaining Cornish mining engines of great age and venturing into agricultural, stationary and road machinery and were very prosperous.

 

Livery followed best glorious practice of that era. The model is set in 1875, just before the all powerful GWR took over the SDR, B&ER et al and spoiled the independent small lines.

Edited by PaulT
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If the fictional railway is to be larger than a light railway, then either it will be duplicating another company's route, bleeding both in the process - as with the SER and LCDR - or the other company has to be deleted from the fictional history. In the latter case, the new railway may many of the old railway's characteristics and possibly much of its rolling stock. It would have the old company's main traffic, but might move it over a different route.

 

As an example, I once postulated that the proposed bridge over the Humber (near where the road bridge stands today) was built c.1865, by a small company that was bought out promptly by the MSLR. This then removes the motivation to build the Hull and Barnsley Railway in the 1880s: a horribly-expensive main line through difficult terrain to break a monopoly that was now already broken. Much layout-planning later, I decided that I still needed a line direct from Barnsley, so invented the Barnsley and Humber which ran south of the Humber rather than north and joined the line over the bridge at Ferriby. I then assigned this railway to the LMS rather than the LNER at grouping, so that my layout could have both LNER and LMS engines. The B&H would have had the same main traffic as the H&B, but the local traffic would have differed, notably steel from the Normanton Park works.

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In, IIRC, the 1860's there was a proposal for a merger between the Caledonian, Glasgow and South Western and North British Railways.  This was agreed by all three at board level and by the shareholders of the CR and G&SWR, but was thrown out by the NBR shareholders.  How different would the railway map of Scotland have been if that had taken place?

 

I also understand that one of the early proposals for Grouping included the creation of a Scottish Group.

 

Jim

 

I wonder if you would have had the Great North of Scotland merging with the companies that eventually formed the Highland?

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If the fictional railway is to be larger than a light railway, then either it will be duplicating another company's route, bleeding both in the process - as with the SER and LCDR - or the other company has to be deleted from the fictional history. In the latter case, the new railway may many of the old railway's characteristics and possibly much of its rolling stock. It would have the old company's main traffic, but might move it over a different route.

 

 

We soon end up with too many railways.  It is one thing losing something small, like the West Norfolk, 'in the folds of the map', but what about a large regional railway, or a company with a trunk route and London terminus?

 

I think, though, JohnR has already struck the nail of large pre-Grouping companies on the head when he posted "I wonder if the best solution might be to take a merger that happened in the 1850s or 1860s, say, and postulate that it didnt happen - or that it happened with different constituents?"

 

This way, you do not add to the real railways, or to the map.  Rather, you lose a railway and replace it with the product of a different set of amalgamations.  Similar, but not in all cases identical, routes are built by your railway, instead of, not as well as, the rival "real" route.

 

I really like the idea of the Manchester & Birmingham that Argos has posted, perfectly illustrating the way alternative history gives rise to a major freelance pre-Grouping company. The only refinement that I would have the temerity to add is that, having secured its own London terminus, the M&B would surely have changed its name to reflect the increased importance thus gained.  I should have thought the London Manchester & Birmingham Railway would do.

 

Inspired by Argos's idea, I sat over coffee this morning with a volume of Talbot doing mental violence to Ramsbottom's designs.

 

Ramsbottom produced locomotives (in green) that sported his own style of fittings and nowt but a weather board for the crew. On the North Western, his successor Webb made changes when he rebuilt Ramsbottom's designs, or, like the DX, built further examples.

 

How, I wondered, might Ramsbottom's designs emerge under the hand of a different successor on the LM&BR (if I may)?

 

That might depend upon who the successor was, because in your alternative reality, you could look around for a real contemporary and recruit him and his characteristic style for the LM&BR.

 

So yes, I sat there picturing these locomotives shorn of their Webb cabs and chimneys.  In my mind's eye the locos were the rich blue of the preserved carriage, and most opulently lined out in black edged vermilion, with Naples yellow distance lines and elaborate incurves to the corners. Frames were claret. On the boilers I mentally fitted polished brass domes of various designs from Johnson to Dean.  The cabs were different from Webb's, especially when I mentally fitted Stirling types, and when it came to replace the original smoke box door, nothing so North Western as that little wheel would do, so I fitted a nice dished or bevelled round door, with conventional 'darts'.  

 

Undoubtedly by now devotees of the Premier Line are promulgating a fatwah, but of course, that will not trouble me because, thanks to Argos, the London & North Western never existed!

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I rather like the LM&B idea. I wonder what colour they painted the coaches, and what the WCJS (for it would surely have existed!) would look like.

 

Is it slightly plausible that a railway might have kept the yellow and black scheme of early L&M into the later 19th century?

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My scheme!
 

Company Name options:

 

Wimbledon & Sutton Railway (W&SR)

London, Wimbledon & Sutton Railway (LW&SR)

Sutton & Dorking Joint Railway (S&DJR...)

Wimbledon, Dorking & Cranleigh Railway (WD&CR)

London, Sutton & Surrey Railway (LS&SR)

Brighton & South Western Joint Railway (B&SWJR)

 

post-33498-0-71261800-1519209493_thumb.jpgpost-33498-0-72284100-1519209508_thumb.jpg

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I was thinking of taking as my starting point the Redhill, Guildford and Reading railway. In reality this was taken over by the SER but SER shareholders complained bitterly for years after about the folly of taking on this loss making arm of the network that seemed to serve no purpose towards the company's primary aim of serving London and the Channel Ports. Had the SER not been beguiled into taking over the RG&R and instead the RG&R appointed as MD a wheeler dealer type like James Staats Forbes (who ran the LCDR) then another history can be considered. Our wheeler dealer might pursue a strategy of being a buffer between the LSWR and the Brighton, perhaps those companies would each be significant shareholders in what is now grandiosely called the Surrey Junction Railway after the independent Leatherhead, Dorking and Horsham railway, which crossed the RG&R at Boxhill, was acquired. Our wheeler dealer would no doubt manage to avoid the SJR being taken over as a joint railway while at the same time getting SJR involvement in the LSWR/LBSCR joint ventures of lines from Leatherhead to Epsom, Wimbledon and ultimately Victoria or Waterloo.

So we would have a smaller railway company, not in the league of the GWR, Midland or LSWR but much bigger than a light railway or a single point to point railway. It would lead a hand to mouth existence and, taking the example of the LCDR, probably doing less locomotive design than intelligent acquisition. The LCDR was pretty good at snapping up bargains from the locomotive builders who were often stuck with unsold locos when the intended client went bankrupt. So we can work on the basis that goods locos and most passenger locos would be of standard Sharp-Stewart, Neilson or Beyer Peacock designs. However we might think that the company would occasionally be flush enough to buy a handful or two of marquee designs for their main London to Reading and London to Horsham trains. These would probably be small 4-4-0s by the 1891 date I have in mind, and I would base their design on the fine 4-4-0s Sharp-Stewart built for the Dutch Netherlands Rhine and Netherlands Central Railways. Based that is in the sense that the functional bits – wheel diameter and wheelbase, boiler and firebox size etc – are the same, but the cosmetics like cab, funnel and dome covers could be changed. These engines might well have a rather fine livery while the goods locos shuffle around in unlined black.

The goods is probably what keeps the company afloat though, in particular providing a route for goods trains from the North and Midlands to South London and Kent. As the Kent coalfield has not yet been discovered this would be useful for coal traffic to the rapidly growing suburbs of London.

Carriage history would be different from the LCDR’s though given that the RG&R goes back to the 1840s. In 1891 the Surrey Junction would be unlikely to have any bogie coaches, but if you had a first class ticket from Victoria to Horsham or Dorking on the morning or early evening train you might expect to travel in a well-appointed six wheel coach, with only six seats in a compartment 7’6” from partition to partition.

If on the other hand you were travelling third class on a Redhill to Boxhill local, you would be on a hard wooden seat in an open box which only had a roof because Parliament required it to. Ahrons would have a field day! If you travelled first class you would be in a small coach that looked as if it really ought to be behind four horses with a post horn player standing at the back. I imagine that Redhill to Boxhill local to be hauled by an ancient (even in 1891) 2-4-0 with four wheel tender, and in addition to the third and first class carriages mentioned would also have a second and a guards van. All four wheel and no more than 20’ long.

Carriage livery would no doubt be chosen to distinguish the Surrey Junction from the LSWR and Brighton trains it shared its London area lines with. As an armchair project I’d go with varnished teak, but not if I was actually going to build it. Then I’d probably go with a dark green, all over for thirds, upper panels on firsts and seconds being cream or ivory. In this particular era third class compartments were rare in composites though I’d expect the Surrey Junction to have a few first-second composites, not least because mixing first and second on a 25' or 27' underframe meant you could get four compartments in without cramping the style of first class passengers.

 

Now for goods stock, someone can correct me if I am wrong, but 1891 would be pre-common user, i.e. if you had a goods wagon on your system that belonged to another company you had to return it as soon as reasonably possible, empty if you had no traffic going back that way. Not like later when you could just use it on your system for as long as you liked. Thus the Surrey Junction would have a goods wagon fleet tailored to the traffic offered locally. And with all those North Downs quarries and Wealden brickworks beside its lines that probably means a lot of two plank opens compared to other lines.

So that would be my idea.

Edited by whart57
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Deleting a real company to free territory for an alternative route - as already suggested - is a winner for the bold and brave. Let's erase a broad target (should be easy to hit) between London and points West, and imagine that Christ Church College Oxford were the backers of a mighty scheme to build a London-Oxford-Bristol trunk line. Rather like the Midland at Derby this resulted in the chief station being Oxford, the celebrated 'Christ Church Meadow' with its all glass train shed designed by Paxton, (the inspiration for the later 'Crystal Palace') and its extensive works nearby at Witney. The general architecture strongly rooted in the classical modes of course, a combined viaduct and aqueduct system to maintain water supply along the route, locomotive classes named for classical authors, with the livery scheme based on the Imperial purple, statues of the company worthies in togas, principal stations given Latinate titles Londinium Terminus, Portis Sabrina, etc..

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Well I must admit ive got a poor imagination so find it hard to visualize imaginary railways so have gone down the safe route of the proposed but unbuilt extension to an existing railway in my case the Caledonian. What I am doing is referring to the OP and the period of pre grouping which I think was just right. Where I started modeling the 1900 onwards period I've now pushed the period back to the 1880 to 1900 period.

 

Enjoying the thread and looking forward to more thoughts and ideas

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The Surrey Junction... might do that idea instead!

 

I intend to do a fictional company at some stage: preferably one linking the SECR, LSWR and LBSCR. I would set it between 1900 and 1914 simply because that would fit with my other pre grouping stock. To be honest I could build my LBSCR layout and have locos visiting from my fictional company.

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Deleting a real company to free territory for an alternative route - as already suggested - is a winner for the bold and brave. Let's erase a broad target (should be easy to hit) between London and points West, and imagine that Christ Church College Oxford were the backers of a mighty scheme to build a London-Oxford-Bristol trunk line. Rather like the Midland at Derby this resulted in the chief station being Oxford, the celebrated 'Christ Church Meadow' with its all glass train shed designed by Paxton, (the inspiration for the later 'Crystal Palace') and its extensive works nearby at Witney. The general architecture strongly rooted in the classical modes of course, a combined viaduct and aqueduct system to maintain water supply along the route, locomotive classes named for classical authors, with the livery scheme based on the Imperial purple, statues of the company worthies in togas, principal stations given Latinate titles Londinium Terminus, Portis Sabrina, etc..

 

Or, their Perspiring Dreams may have led them to sponsor a Standard Gauge rival to the Great Way Round, the Oxford-Exeter Direct, or 'OED'.  

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I wonder if you would have had the Great North of Scotland merging with the companies that eventually formed the Highland?

Given the way the GNoS behaved in Aberdeen prior to the building of the joint station and their somewhat fraught relationships with the Highland, I very much doubt that anyone would ever have merged with them! IIRC, Ahrons described the GNoS as '.....a terrible railway. In fact it didn't deserve to be called a railway.......', or words to that effect.

 

Jim (donning hard hat and ducking below the parapet in anticipation of an attack from Inverurie.)

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The key point on my Surrey Junction Railway suggestion would be Boxhill Junction. This would actually be where the modern Dorking station is. Dorking on the SJR would be today's Dorking West, which was the SER's Dorking as well. I've drawn a sketch of how I would envisage it

 

post-14223-0-50270500-1519223672_thumb.png

 

There was a spur in reality but it was to allow running from the Reading direction to Horsham and was gone by the Grouping. The main spur is so that the SJR's London trains can run to Guildford and Reading but I've also drawn a spur so that locals can shuttle between Redhill and Boxhill.

 

I'm assuming no goods facilities here, local goods for the town would be handled at Dorking and there are also Holmwood and West Humble stations not so far away for rural goods.

 

Possibly the SJR would have loco facilities here, I myself might put a small night shed here with an allocation of two or three old wheezers for local duties. Others might see this as the place to have the main works. Personally I'd think of that being out at Reading, well out of the way

 

Operational interest could be tweaked by having Redhill to Guildford locals reverse at Boxhill. Heck the SER did that at Cannon Street! You could also have an ex-London train drop off - or even slip - a through coach for Reigate and Redhill, which would need then to be attached to a local.

 

Would it work as a layout?

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"Undoubtedly by now devotees of the Premier Line are promulgating a fatwah, but of course, that will not trouble me because, thanks to Argos, the London & North Western never existed!"

 

Um.... I'm being mis-quoted here and I'm now fearful of having my subscription to the LNWR Society returned!  :rtfm:  :banned: 

 

 

My original intention was that the LNWR did indeed form but was only an amalgam of the London & Birmingham and the Grand Junction Railway .

These two companies seemed to be working in close co-operation from the start with the M&B being very much the outsider.

 

Of course the M&B challenged the LNWR over a lot of its route and a great rivalry was created. 

 

Hopefully I won't have to go to Crewe for a while........ :lol:

Edited by Argos
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I rather like the LM&B idea. I wonder what colour they painted the coaches, and what the WCJS (for it would surely have existed!) would look like.

 

Is it slightly plausible that a railway might have kept the yellow and black scheme of early L&M into the later 19th century?

 

Hi Guy, the L&M was absorbed into the Grand Junction Railway rather than the M&B.

 

That said who knows what the livery would have been, the world is your oyster.

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We soon end up with too many railways.  It is one thing losing something small, like the West Norfolk, 'in the folds of the map', but what about a large regional railway, or a company with a trunk route and London terminus?

 

I think, though, JohnR has already struck the nail of large pre-Grouping companies on the head when he posted "I wonder if the best solution might be to take a merger that happened in the 1850s or 1860s, say, and postulate that it didnt happen - or that it happened with different constituents?"

 

This way, you do not add to the real railways, or to the map.  Rather, you lose a railway and replace it with the product of a different set of amalgamations.  Similar, but not in all cases identical, routes are built by your railway, instead of, not as well as, the rival "real" route.

 

I really like the idea of the Manchester & Birmingham that Argos has posted, perfectly illustrating the way alternative history gives rise to a major freelance pre-Grouping company. The only refinement that I would have the temerity to add is that, having secured its own London terminus, the M&B would surely have changed its name to reflect the increased importance thus gained.  I should have thought the London Manchester & Birmingham Railway would do.

 

Inspired by Argos's idea, I sat over coffee this morning with a volume of Talbot doing mental violence to Ramsbottom's designs.

 

Ramsbottom produced locomotives (in green) that sported his own style of fittings and nowt but a weather board for the crew. On the North Western, his successor Webb made changes when he rebuilt Ramsbottom's designs, or, like the DX, built further examples.

 

How, I wondered, might Ramsbottom's designs emerge under the hand of a different successor on the LM&BR (if I may)?

 

That might depend upon who the successor was, because in your alternative reality, you could look around for a real contemporary and recruit him and his characteristic style for the LM&BR.

 

So yes, I sat there picturing these locomotives shorn of their Webb cabs and chimneys.  In my mind's eye the locos were the rich blue of the preserved carriage, and most opulently lined out in black edged vermilion, with Naples yellow distance lines and elaborate incurves to the corners. Frames were claret. On the boilers I mentally fitted polished brass domes of various designs from Johnson to Dean.  The cabs were different from Webb's, especially when I mentally fitted Stirling types, and when it came to replace the original smoke box door, nothing so North Western as that little wheel would do, so I fitted a nice dished or bevelled round door, with conventional 'darts'.  

 

Undoubtedly by now devotees of the Premier Line are promulgating a fatwah, but of course, that will not trouble me because, thanks to Argos, the London & North Western never existed!

Not an issue, because the LNWR was banned from selling its locos in competition with the independent loco manufacturers. They did sell some obsolete carriages, mainly just the bodies for summer houses on the south coast. If you want to include any LNWR stock, then a joint company of some sort is called for.

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Some of the welsh lines would be an interesting example for loco policy. There were examples of a design built by one of the major manufacturers for one company being built by another for example, sometimes modified, sometimes not. The Brecon and Merthyr had 6 locos that were effectively copies of GWR medium Metros, and 0-6-2s that were copies of Rhymnney classes, but with round top, not belpaire fireboxes. Then there could be house style too - no matter who built locomotives for the Barry railway they all had the Barry cab.

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Not an issue, because the LNWR was banned from selling its locos in competition with the independent loco manufacturers. They did sell some obsolete carriages, mainly just the bodies for summer houses on the south coast. If you want to include any LNWR stock, then a joint company of some sort is called for.

 

Hi Jol,

 

I think you need to read the original premise back in post #20.

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"Undoubtedly by now devotees of the Premier Line are promulgating a fatwah, but of course, that will not trouble me because, thanks to Argos, the London & North Western never existed!"

 

Um.... I'm being mis-quoted here and I'm now fearful of having my subscription to the LNWR Society returned!  :rtfm:  :banned: 

 

 

My original intention was that the LNWR did indeed form but was only an amalgam of the London & Birmingham and the Grand Junction Railway .

These two companies seemed to be working in close co-operation from the start with the M&B being very much the outsider.

 

Of course the M&B challenged the LNWR over a lot of its route and a great rivalry was created. 

 

Hopefully I won't have to go to Crewe for a while........ :lol:

 

Oh, that's fine.  I like the LNWR, and this way I can have through coaches from both (once the coach style and livery for the M&B is confirmed)

 

 

Not an issue, because the LNWR was banned from selling its locos in competition with the independent loco manufacturers.

 

It's the fact that they had to be stopped from trying that's significant! 

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Hi Jol,

 

I think you need to read the original premise back in post #20.

 

Yes, I missed that by not reading the whole thread fully when I stumbled upon it.

 

Perhaps the thread title would have been better put as fictitious rather than freelance? Either way anything goes, but to maintain the believable criteria, then it is perhaps important to concentrate on what the engineers would have done within the constraints of the funds available. While architectural style can vary according to the locality (take the Trent Valley Railway, whose buildings were quite different from the earlier L&B, etc. but became part of the LNWR infrastructure) locos could either be different types/classes if bought in or show some consistent CME style if built in house. Likewise, carriages would  be the same, but probably bought in larger numbers so show more similarities by appearing in "sets". Goods stock is easier, although you might have to design some of your own company wagons and vans, but coming up with a livery shouldn't be too difficult. Too often, the believability of a model is let down by the unlikely mix of locos and stock that appear on it.

 

One way might be to do the early Col. Stephens thing - a small, impecunious railway. Or a  local vanity project, which is how many early railways started out to connect a local town, port, etc. to a larger main line. You could take the Southwold Railway or the Lynton and Barnstable examples and do your own thing with narrow gauge, etc. Unless of course, you want to model the main line, then creating a whole new and relatively large railway company becomes paramount. 

 

Personally I find it difficult enough modelling a fictitious location of a real railway and getting it to look right!

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Oh, that's fine.  I like the LNWR, and this way I can have through coaches from both (once the coach style and livery for the M&B is confirmed)

 

 

 

It's the fact that they had to be stopped from trying that's significant! 

 

I don't think they actually tried very hard, but as Crewe was such a large production facility and they claimed they could build simple locos cheaply (e.g. 0-6-0 Coal Engines), the private loco builders made a pre-emptive strike. The LNWR did build a few locos for overseas railways, but like the pother main railway companies, never got into building locos for others. If memory serves, they even bought from the North British later.

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I don't think they actually tried very hard, but as Crewe was such a large production facility and they claimed they could build simple locos cheaply (e.g. 0-6-0 Coal Engines), the private loco builders made a pre-emptive strike. The LNWR did build a few locos for overseas railways, but like the pother main railway companies, never got into building locos for others. If memory serves, they even bought from the North British later.

 

They sold some second hand, though that's OK, but built new DXs for the L&Y, IIRC.

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