The London North Eastern Railway was also created in 1923, this is because in 1923 the smaller railway companies had to join up to form bigger companies so that they could work together and not lose so much money. The LNER was formed from the Great Northern, North Eastern and North British Railways, plus smaller companies.
The LNER didn’t have the strongest of financies, but had probably the best up and coming young mangers around. Sir Ralph Wedgewood, the chief general manager, was the creator of this scheme and it proved successful.
The LNER mainly concentrated on trying to retain the freight traffic from the ever growing road competition, but the passenger side had no problem. The main man for the LNER was Sir Nigel Gresley, a man with brilliant ideas for locos and their trains. Gresley had come from the GNR, a line with a tradition of high speed, so naturally he wanted to carry on with high speed and shorten long journey times to the minimum. He created the streamlined A4’s, plus other powerful engines, beautiful carriages which were totally different and caught the public’s eye, also the imaginative services which were provided, like the non stop London-Edinburgh run of the Flying Scotsman, plus the Pullman trains like the Queen of Scots.

Between the years of 1932-38, the public saw a race which consisted of all the big four companies, the race for speed. On July 3rd 1938, LNER A4 Class No.4468 'Mallard' set a new world speed record for steam traction of 126mph, which still hasn't been broken to this day. When WWII arrived the A4 classes were stored away, but some were used for military freight work. When BR took over in 1948 the speed kings were let out and re-numbered as most engines were because they weren't in LNER ownership anymore.

Below are some images of some classic LNER designs, click the image to view it full size: