LMS JOURNAL

INTRODUCTION

LMS Locomotive Profiles is a series of locomotive monographs launched as a joint venture between Wild Swan Publications. the National Railway Museum and the production team of Fred James. David Hunt and Bob Essery. It has come about as a result of research undertaken in support of Midland Record, published by Wild Swan, and whilst readers of that journal will be familiar with the background details, we envisage that there will be many for whom some explanation is appropriate. Midland Record, which is an occasional work, was launched in the autumn of 1994 with the aim of publishing material about the Midland Railway and its activities including those of its constituents and successors, from the pre-amalgamation through to post-nationalation eras. When the magazine was conceived, it was realised that some topics would be worthy of whole issues and the idea came about of producing stand-alone supplements. The first of these covered the history and technicalities of the American locomotives owned by the Midland, with much previously unpublished material and drawing, and the second supplemented the available information on goods wagons. During research at the NRM, however, a vast amount of new material on Midland and LMS locomotives came to light - far more than we envisaged would be the case - and it was decided to mount a joint publishing initiative so that it would become available to a wider public. We concluded that this material should be presented in three ways:

Midland engines that did not become LMS assets, or only survived in small numbers or for a short time into the grouping, will be dealt with in Midland Record articles.
Midland engines that survived in significant numbers into the grouping or beyond will be the subjects of a series of supplements to Midland Record to be known as Midland Engines. This series will include locomotives that became LMS standard types but had origins in the Midland, e.g., the Compounds and Class 4 goods engines.
LMS standard locomotives not of Midland parentage will be covered in LMS Locomotive Profiles.

Bearing in mind that Midland Record includes information on the Midland Division of the LMS and the London Midland Region of British Railways, any corrections or additions to the material in these monographs will be published in it. Previous articles in the Record have included material on the Deeley 0-6-4 passenger tank engines, Class 4 goods locomotives and the Johnson Compounds. A pilot article about the Johnson 1121 Class 0-6-0 goods tank engines appeared in issue No. 11 to launch the joint initiative with the NRM. Future issues of the parent magazine will also feature locomotive articles from the MR, LMS and BR eras.

Our thanks are due to the staff of the National Railway Museum for their assistance in obtaining much of the material from which these books were prepared.

David Hunt and Bob Essery.

Fred James

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the death of Fred James, who died on 10th June 2010. Fred was one of the original three members of the LMS Locomotive Profile and Midland Engines production team; in fact, it was when Fred and Bob Essery started work cataloguing the Derby drawing collection at the NRM in 1996 that the idea of the two series was born. The following year David Hunt joined the team and in 1999 the first volumes appeared as a joint venture between these three and the NRM. Fred was responsible for the preparation of many original drawings as well as redrawing several others because of very poor quality originals, which went a long way towards enhancing the quality of the works. He also provided a lot of technical information gleaned from a lifetime in engineering, an intimate knowledge of Derby Locomotive Works and a collection of primary research material without which the end products would have been much poorer. As well as being a member of our production team, Fred was an LMS Society colleague and good friend. All of us concerned with the series preparation will miss him a great deal.

Born at Wolverton in 1926, Fred began an apprenticeship at Derby Locomotive Works during World War 2 and qualified as an electrical engineer, working during their construction on the first main line diesel locomotives to enter service in Britain as LMS 10000 and BR (LMR) 10001. After some years at Derby Works he moved to Brush Electrical Engineering at Loughborough then in 1960 went to Rolls-Royce in Derby working on aero engines and test equipment. He was an excellent draughtsman and model engineer as well as being the electrical 'gaffer' of several exhibition model railway layouts. In addition to participating in the production of our two series and several articles in various magazines, Fred assisted some very well-known model railway manufacturers with their prototype research and many thousands of enthusiasts owe him a debt of gratitude for enabling the production of several of today's highly accurate 4mm and 7mm scale ready to run locomotives and rolling stock.

David Hunt.

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