Despite his 'unusual make-up', as described by his friend George Barlow,[3] his retiring nature, and the prejudices that may have existed in 1930s, he was readily accepted as an expert live steam model engineer.
Lawrence loved steam locomotives from the time he was a child and spent several years in the employ of the LBSC Railway, from which he later adopted his pen name.
LBSC's contention was that scale locomotives should be fitted with fire-tube boilers modeled very closely on full size locomotive practice i.e. be coal fired, with multiple fire-tubes and a number of superheater elements, as compared with then commercial and hobbyist practice of building spirit fuelled, water-tube boilers.
[5] LBSC's live steam locomotive type boilers proved to be outstanding steamers, quite capable of hauling real passengers.
[12] Many of these designs are still available today as sets of drawings,[13][14] and some were later produced in book form,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Before LBSC started publishing in the 1920s, model locomotive practice had been divided into two camps.
The advent of LBSC's designs that could haul their full size drivers, although a lot less realistic than a "model" railway, were much more fun.
"An enigmatic character, not to mention one who had almost no ability to tolerate criticism of his work, he nevertheless had a natural empathy with his readers and a remarkable knack of making the most complicated workshop procedures sound utterly straightforward".