Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: lms

This is one of my favorite rail photographs of all time. I love the way the light outlines the boiler, as well as the crisp detail of the illuminated areas, and the contrast is also near-perfect, even if the ground detail is somewhat limited. On many of my prints of this shot, I've burned the ground in, of course, and it looks like I did the same with this one.

St. Pancras station, and the Midland Hotel which is incorporated into the front of the building, was arguably the most beautiful, spectacular commercial failure in the history of London when it was constructed in 1867. Overwhelmingly the most grandiose and beautiful of London's stations, it was redundant when (over)built, and a product of the rivalry between the various private companies vying for the London market during the mid-19th Century. The Midland Railway, the original owners, spent 2,000,000 pounds on its construction, enough so that the company never recoupped the loss, especially since someone made the blunder of building the hotel without modern plumbing!!! Although the station was built as a combination passenger and freight station, with the underground freight handling facilities specialising in overnight beer shipments, little of the station has ever been put into full use. This may have a happy ending, though, as since I took these photos the building has been undergoing a massive renovation to serve as a successor to Waterloo International once the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is built, with the old beer cellars being reused for dedicated international platforms and a car park.

Here's the fatter of St. Pancras's two towers. I love the arches on it!! :-)

I had caught up to the then-newly-restored LMS Jubilee Class "Leander" at the Return of the Legends train show at Crewe works earlier in 2003, but I only shot Kodachromes then. These shots, while quite brillant in color quality, were actually shot with Jessops Diamond 200, if I'm not mistaken. I got the film for free whenever I developed film with Jessops, so by late 2003 I was shooting quite a bit of it. All of these shots were on the East Lancashire Railway, where Leander eventually ended up in excursion service.

This is my second shot of Leander at Bury. Here you get to see more of the smokebox and front, albeit obscured by the lead passenger coach.

Here's a nice interior shot of the cab. This was one of my favorites from the East Lancs, as I really liked how the fire came out.

I took this shot at Holt station on the North Norfolk Railway, along with a roll of other black and whites that I took that day. This was my second visit to the North Norfolk Railway, which was done precisely to shoot photos, and in particular black and whites.

I took this at the National Railway Museum of Britain in York, and the locomotive is the very first of the famous LMS "Black Five" 5P5F Class 4-6-0s. Although some others had lower numbers, like 4767 downloaded right before this, the first Black Five does nevertheless carry the number 5000. Here it's displayed coupled to a period version of the Royal Train, as it would be configured to pull it.

7050 was one of the first diesel locomotives in regular service in Britain, being part of the London Midland & Scottish Railway's limited attempts at dieselising shunting duties in the 1930s. Surprisingly, it's been preserved, and this was largely due to its long career in the War Department, which didn't end until 1979.