This is the tale of 150 years of the London Midland & Scottish Railway. Rich with detail and full of evocative images, this book lays bare what was the world's largest commercial organization. Brought into being by the 1923 Amalgamation, the LMS suffered from its sheer size and the emnity between previous rival management. Yet despite its problems, the railway built some of the world's finest locomotives and its passenger coaches set new standards, while there was romance even in the everyday business of carrying prodigious quantities of coal and serving isolated hilltop communities. This book includes accounts by a team of experts who knew, and in some cases actually worked on, the LMS. The challenge of the depression and World War II are recalled, together with the eventual division of the railway into BR's London Midland and separate Scottish Regions.