| The LNER according to me |
| I have to admit, I was interested in the LNER before I knew what the letters meant, My father bought me a Hornby "Flying Scotsman" model when I was 11 and ever since I've been completely hooked. Living in New Zealand my whole life, I've never been to Britain let alone had any personal experiance of the real thing, in fact I was born 25 years after the LNER ceased to exist, so to me, the LNER exists as my model, created mostly from my own imagination & not representing anywhere in particular, although I like the loco's & trains to be a good representation of the real thing if not 100% accurate. A model railway to me must be treated as what it really is, a toy of sorts, something to be mucked around with on weekends and when the wife goes shopping, having read hundreds of model magazine articles I get the impression some people loose sight of the primary idea of the whole thing, that is, to have fun playing with trains. My philosophy regarding models is to keep it simple, enough detail to look realistic ,but not so much that it becomes fragile, I also have a few whimsical features added to my railway, something silly, just to stop me from getting too serious |
| Questions I wanted answered Why did Flying Scotsman change class? I remember reading Hornby catalogues years ago and I wondered why it was that the "Flying Scotsman" model was classified as an A1 in one book and as an A3 in the other, the answer is really quite simple.....Flying Scotsman was built in 1923 and is just one of a class of 52 engines of the same design, in 1928 an improved version was created and was sufficiently different to warrant its own class name,this being A3,as the older A1s became due for major overhauls the were gradually all upgraded to the same specifications as the A3 class, so eventually by 1948 all of the A1s, including "Flying Scotsman" had been converted to A3,so to answer the original question, Hornby had modelled the locomotive in both original and altered form. What is the LNER ? The London & North Eastern Railway was formed in 1923 and was the result of a forced merger know to most as the "grouping". The LNER group was formed of the six railway companies occupying the eastern parts of England & Scotland, these being the Great Northern, Great Central, Great Eastern, North Eastern, North British & Great North of Scotland railways. The company operated at a profit (just) for 25 years until all of the "grouping" railways were forced to merge into the Nationalised British Railways system. Why so Famous? The LNER was the least profitable of all of the railway companies formed in 1923,but it was lucky enough to have a very innovative chief mechanical engineer in Nigel Gresley. The fame nowdays can be attributed to two engines,both of Gresley design, Flying Scotsman ,which is famous for numerous reasons, first loco to officially record 100mph, first to haul non-stop train between London & Edinburgh etc, and Mallard, holder of the 126mph steam speed record. The LNER has plenty of other reasons to be famous but if you look in any kids book about railways, it's these two engines that invariably appear when mention is made of famous British locomotives. |