Michael Clifford
Another potentially useful resource is the Internet Archive https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php
Many books are available to download or borrow for a renewable period of one hour, for which a free registration / account is required.
Enter search details as appropriate (Creator seems to cover author and publisher in some cases) and use various forms of the topic you require information on, for example LMS, London Midland & Scottish, London Midland and Scottish, etc. and try with and without quotation marks around the phrase.
Two examples:
Using “Midland Railway” for the title generates 81 responses, some of which are American Midland Railways and there are some duplicates therein, but several are UK relevant and potentially useful. https://archive.org/search?query=title%3A%28midland+railway%29
Using “R.J. Essery” for the creator is unsuccessful. Using just “Essery” produces eight hits including two very useful volumes. https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%28%22Essery%22%29
The HathiTrust https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?a=page;page=advanced is another possibility but in my experience not as good as Internet Archive.