How would you rank the Big 4 railway companies in terms of your liking/interests?

[OnTheBranchline]

Just thought I would ask - I don't think big of a poll has been done before.

Edited November 23, 2022 by OnTheBranchline

[Captain Kernow]

There's no option for GWR, LMS, SR, LNER!

 

[Welchester]

15 minutes ago, Captain Kernow said:

There's no option for GWR, LMS, SR, LNER!

 

I second the captain. 

[OnTheBranchline]

27 minutes ago, Captain Kernow said:

There's no option for GWR, LMS, SR, LNER!

 

 

D'oh - Fixed

Edited November 23, 2022 by OnTheBranchline

[OnTheBranchline]

Our GWR breathren have deserted us.

[Bucoops]

LNER and 3 other wannabes :)

[DenysW]

39 minutes ago, Captain Kernow said:

There's no option for GWR, LMS, SR, LNER!

There no option for LMS only (i.e. the rest nowhere, why bother ranking other than perfection?). Just pointing out SWMBO's opinion

[Nova Scotian]

Not afraid to report I went SR, GWR, LNER and LMS.

 

Seems harsh as I do like Coronation Class, Royal Scots etc, but Gresley has the edge in big engines :)

 

Then GWR tank engines push them into second for me. As a kid I didn't like the King/Castle compared to the big LNER and LMS engines, but have come to appreciate them more with age.

 

Lord Nelsons, Schools, Bulleid Pacifics etc push SR in to first place. The engineering challenges they faced, and then looks + utility. 

 

Of course, once it's BR I'm a Western Region fan, and Scotland :)

[LBRJ]

I have cast my vote, but each one of the "Big 4" encompasses far too large a geographical area to accurately reflect my preferences.

 

I would have voted GWR with a small splash of LSWR if I were being totally truthful.

But I also find parts of the Midland, the Great Eastern and the L&Y to be of at least a passing level of some interest.

[melmoth]

The Great Western is obviously first, but I can't decide whether the Cambrian goes ahead of the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire or after the Brecon and Merthyr

[wombatofludham]

1) LMS

2) SR
3) LNER (despite me being very distantly related to Sir Nige...)



100) GWR

Sorry, I've never liked the GWR although I will play fair and admit they did train up Sir William who did do some nice work for the LMS.  I admire the SR for its commitment to cost effective electrification and colour light signalling.  The LNER is an odd one, slowly coming round to the idea of mainline electrification which was stopped by the war, but not being very generous on services that were not crack London expresses.  The GWR, well any railway that can dress up locos to look like Edwardian tea urns and name their locos after the director's mates summer houses, then in a mad fit of the vapours think strapping a jet engine and dynamo to power an electric loco was a good thing, doesn't appeal to me although I will say their diesel railcars were a good idea and the first batch of buffet equipped art deco rockets were really good looking machines.

But for me, even though the first few years were a bit muddled when it came to motive power, the LMS is best, consistently moving freight and passengers in an efficient, business-like manner, having some of the best general purpose passenger stock by the late 30s at regular fares and planning some major investment in electrification to Bedford which would have used a newly rebuilt Euston of a similar appearance to 1930s American Union stations.  A solid, workaday railway that eschewed the chintziness of the GWR.

 

 

[kevinlms]

At the time of writing this, there are 40 votes.

 

Counting up railways in 1st or 2nd place, we have.

 

LNER 22 Votes

LMS 21 Votes

GWR 19 Votes

SR 18 Votes

 

Which adds up to 80.

 

So the top 2 currently are the 2 northern companies.

 

Edit to add

 

5 minutes after I post this, someone has deleted their vote!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited November 24, 2022 by kevinlms
More info

[DenysW]

Err - Using what criteria? And during which period?

 

While I agree with @wombatofludham's logic for his criteria (and have never been a fan of the GWR's advocates' attitude of superiority), I believe that GWR was the best for paying dividends. LNER was financially crippled by having GER and GCR. SR had LC&D in it that hadn't paid a dividend since 1870. Early LMS was disorganised, unpunctual and dilapidated - later LMS much less so.  GWR was helped initially by having one dominant constituent member, and by having no marginally profitable Scottish railways forced into it, although giving them GNoS would have been fun and almost as logical as giving it to LNER. You can sneer at SR for being a tram company if you want to repeat a 1930s insult.

 

And so on. So you can make a defensible case for any ordering as long as you choose your criteria.

[DenysW]

5 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Counting up railways in 1st or 2nd place, we have.

I'm sorry, but no. Look at Baseball Writer's of America voting for Most Valuable Player as a model. 4 for first, 3 for second, 2 for third, 1 for fourth.

Edited November 24, 2022 by DenysW
Spelling. I had the firth, not the number.

[kevinlms]

1 minute ago, DenysW said:

I'm sorry, but no. Look at Baseball Writer's of America voting for Most Valuable Player as a model. 4 for first, 3 for second, 2 for third, 1 for fourth.

Count up any way YOU like and present it as you wish! Personally, I think that places 3 & 4 mean they get minimal representation on a layout - a few wagons, amongst the fleet.

 

🥳

[kevinlms]

12 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Our GWR breathren have deserted us.

You'll have to be content with the fact you put the GWR first in your poll!

[DenysW]

30 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

mean they get minimal representation on a layout - a few wagons, amongst the fleet

Partly on the Wright Writes thread there has been a lot of discussion on what rakes of wagons were realistic post WW1, and the answer is a jumble, with pre-Grouping logos present for a very long time. So if your criterion is realism, a bit of everything. If your criterion is poor representation for those Big 4 members whose style you personally dislike, yes.

 

 

[Captain Kernow]

13 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

D'oh - Fixed

Thanks, and I have now voted.

 

I'd have been more than happy if the LNER was completely left off, or at least trailing along a very, very long way behind the Southern on a thin and tenuous tether.

 

The LMS isn't so far behind the GWR in my estimation and the Southern holds up honourably, at least in that they were an equal partner in that most loved of Joint lines, the Somerset & Dorset.

 

I've never really understood the concept of the LNER. What exactly was it, anyway? Perhaps some impecunious, semi-moribund light railway over towards Ipswich?

 

Anyway, I'm not sure where those cute J72s come from, but they're one of my favourite engines. Anything that lovely must have come from Swindon.

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Captain Kernow

[kevinlms]

30 minutes ago, DenysW said:

Partly on the Wright Writes thread there has been a lot of discussion on what rakes of wagons were realistic post WW1, and the answer is a jumble, with pre-Grouping logos present for a very long time. So if your criterion is realism, a bit of everything. If your criterion is poor representation for those Big 4 members whose style you personally dislike, yes.

 

 

I'm fully aware of the pooling of wagons and how that affected what you saw and where.

 

Here is some background information on the LMS.

 

https://www.lmssociety.org.uk/topics/freightWorking.shtml

 

The following is an excellent reason why an LMS layout should have more LMS/LNER wagons than GWR/SR. Not least this reason.

 

The list (the 1933 list of NON-COMMON USER wagon) is formidable but in practice the numbers involved were not great especially since the LMS and LNE had a private arrangement making their fitted covered vans common user between themselves.

Also discussed at length in many places on RMweb.

 

Not least this.

 

The suggestion was that a typical goods train with twenty vehicles behind the loco would on average contain something like 8 LMS wagons, 7 LNER wagons, 3 GWR wagons and 1 SR wagon with a brake van belonging to the hauling company bringing up the rear.

 

So I'll stick to the idea that most wagons for me, would be LMS or LNER and a token representation of the other two.

I accept that a lot depends on what period (the closer to September 1939 you get, the more jumbled up - WW2 pooling and nationalisation, belongs in a separate discussion) and where geographically and obviously your conclusion may vary.

 

[Downer]

Nice idea, and I feel it would be even more interesting to rank the major pre-grouping companies as sources of inspiration.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Downer

[kevinlms]

55 minutes ago, Downer said:

Nice idea, and I feel it would be even more interesting to rank the major pre-grouping companies as sources of inspiration.

There were 120 companies grouped in 1923, go for it!

[wombatofludham]

For the avoidance of doubt (a wonderfully superfluous piece of gobbledygook given communication is all about clearly conveying thought) my listings were based on personal prejudice.  Whilst I'm planning an LMS steam layout as part of the "Trinity" project (a layout that will in one terminus to fiddle yard allow me to operate LMS 1928-38, Irish Rail 1993 and non stabiliser rail Southern Region and Western Region 1970s) I do help run a GWR layout having undergone aversion therapy and can even now tell the difference between some nominally identical GWR copper tea urns.  

I think my aversion to the GWR comes from the attitudes of some of the railway's advocates rather than the line itself, after all, they did have a fantastic attitude to safety, adopting ATC when other railways thought colour lights and better steel bodied coaches were enough.

[Michael Hodgson]

14 hours ago, melmoth said:

The Great Western is obviously first, but I can't decide whether the Cambrian goes ahead of the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire or after the Brecon and Merthyr

The Cambrian was more important, but the B&M before S&M of course.

[wombatofludham]

1 hour ago, Downer said:

Nice idea, and I feel it would be even more interesting to rank the major pre-grouping companies as sources of inspiration.

That's easy.  LNWR then everything else.

Who cannot love a railway with a scrap and build policy after a relatively short lifespan, prefab stations and efficient loco works, a naming policy best described as a non-policy and who seemingly used a bingo machine to number their locos which must have annoyed contemporary trainspotters.  They also painted their locos black, the only suitable colour for any steam loco.

[westernviscount]

Ok, so there is the Great Western Railway but what do the others stand for? ;-)