Royal Mail Recalls Glory Days Of LMS

An iconic Co Antrim-based locomotive is to appear on a British stamp for the first time as Royal Mail takes a trip back to the golden age of steam with a celebration of the 'Big Four' railway companies. Great British Railways features some of the classic locomotives that powered their way around the UK.

The set also marks the 50th anniversary of the building of the last UK steam locomotive, British Rail Evening Star.

The Northern Ireland locomotive featured on the 97p stamp is a London Midland and Scottish Northern Counties Committee (LMS) Class WT 'Engine No 2'.

It is pictured at Larne Station, around 1947 with the steam engine based on a standard LMS design but built for the wider Irish track.

John Lockett, the RPSI Vice-Chairman, said: "The Railway Preservation Society of Ireland is delighted that Royal Mail has featured an LMS-NCC Class WT engine on its set of classic locomotive stamps.

"The Society is particularly pleased by the choice of no. 2 engine at Larne, because her sister locomotive no. 4 is in the Society's collection of preserved mainline steam engines."

By the end of the 19th century, numerous private railway companies competed fiercely across the British Isles, but by 1923, with profits waning due to the increasing competition from cars, buses and lorries, over 120 private railway companies were merged into the Big Four.

These comprised of the London, Midland & Scottish (including the Northern Counties Committee in Northern Ireland), the London & North Eastern, the Great Western - which celebrates its 175th anniversary this year - and the Southern Railways.

After the Second World War the Big Four became British Railways in 1948, and in March 1960, Evening Star brought to an end over 130 years of steam-locomotive building for Britain's mainline railways, leaving Swindon Works in a blaze of publicity in 1960.

Barbara Roulston, Head of External Relations for Royal Mail Group, said: "The association of steam and stamps goes right back to the 1840s when the introduction of the Penny Post coincided with the arrival of The Steam Age.

"The steam locomotive came to symbolize an age of unprecedented mobility and industrial prowess across the UK.

"For this issue we have selected six of the classic locomotives used by the Big Four railway companies as a fitting tribute to the steam era and also to mark the 50th anniversary of the building of the Evening Star, the last of the British-built locomotives."

(BMcC/KMcA)