The LNER Encyclopedia

If what follows is already known please forgive me, but experience has shown that few people are aware of the myth surrounding LNER engine shed codes. It is commonly believed through numerous published works and websites that the LNER allocated codes to the sheds it inherited from its constituent companies. For example: TUX Tuxford, TWD Tweedmouth, THN Thornton Junction.

However, those codes were a December 1931 invention by the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society, for use in its journal The Railway Observer for saving space and ease of reference in its tables of locomotive re-allocations and disposals! So the LNER did not codify its sheds but did apply stencilled depot names to the front buffer beams of its locomotives, such practice ending with the BR era.

The attached list, which is reproduced with permission of the current Editor of the RCTS, is taken from the April 1933 edition of the society's journal.

14D wrote: ↑Tue Jun 01, 2021 8:25 am ...So the LNER did not codify its sheds but did apply stencilled depot names to the front buffer beams of its locomotives, such practice ending with the BR era...

I wasn't alive to see it, so can only judge from the photographic evidence, and would suggest this practise was honoured more in the breach than the observance. Those photos of the LNER's locos in regular service with a bufferbeam clean enough to be readable show the class designation fairly frequently, home shed infrequently, and of the latter, North Eastern section's York and Ghead appeared to be the most regular practitioners.