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Unfinished GWR red wagons in 2mm FS


Gingerbread

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This short entry was prompted by recent discussion of the old GWR wagon red, in Mikkel's recent blog entry on the Farthing layouts for a 3-plank open in GWR red, at http://www.rmweb.co....pen-in-gwr-red/

 

I suspect that any attempt to distinguish between red and grey wagons in old photographs is going to be difficult, perhaps impossible, due to the similarity between the two shades when converted to grey in the photo - specially as we don't know what shade the red originally was, and it probably varied significantly.

 

But we can try the reverse exercise - paint some wagons in a suitable mixture of reds and greys, then create some monochrome photos of them, and compare the various shades of grey in the monochrome photo.

 

Here follows my modest contribution to the debate.

 

First a photo of 5 half-finished wagons in a mixture of red and grey - the red being an initial attempt on my part to reproduce the elusive red variously described as "light", "dark" and "warm", and used prior to some uncertain cutoff point between 1870 and 1910 (depending which authority you choose to believe) - see details at http://www.gwr.org.u...eswagonred.html

blogentry-10888-0-57086600-1299240494_thumb.jpg

 

 

Then the same photo decolourised - i.e. reduced to a grey monochrome, similar to photos from that period.

blogentry-10888-0-74312400-1299240519_thumb.jpg

 

 

Preliminary conclusion - the "red" wagons are a little lighter than the "grey" ones - but it would be dangerous to read too much into that difference, as I think the two grey wagons used in this example are relatively dark - other photos indicate lighter shades were also seen (faded? or different paint mixes?).

 

It's probably safe to say that a wagon that shows up from the period 1880-1910 as dark grey in a monochrome photo was GWR grey. It's likely that a wagon which shows up as light grey was in GWR red, faded with age. For those that show up in mid-grey, the choice is yours (as also is the choice where to draw the line between the various shades of grey in the photo).

 

So it looks as if you can choose your colour, red or grey, and your shade of red, and then enjoy an inconclusive discussion with the experts whether you got it "right" smile.gif.

 

For those interested in the wagons - from left to right:

W1 cattle wagon, built ca 1890-1900 (modified from BR cattle wagon)

4 plank open, built ca 1885-1900 (similar to O5, but using single lever brakes rather than Dean-Churchward)

V6 iron mink, built ca 1885-1900

V5 mink, built ca 1902 (or possibly V4 built ca 1905 - haven't measured the width/height sufficiently accurately to be sure)

W5 cattle wagon, built ca 1902 (also modified from BR cattle wagon)

 

David

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Nice models! I think we need to be a bit cautious about interpretation of colours from old monochrome photographs - the orthochromatic plates used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries responded differently to the various light wavelengths. IIRC in general reds appear very dark, while blues are much lighter compared to modern monochrome film. Given that the GWR wagon grey was pretty dark anyway, distinguishing between the two colours may be pretty difficult.

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David,

 

Whilst I wouldn't rule out the possibility of doing experiments like this, there are a couple of problems with your approach. Firstly, I assume you are using a digital camera, not film? If so, the relationship between a digital image and monochrome, or panchromatic, film is a little more complex than just pressing a button in a paint program. Secondly, you say

...a wagon that shows up from the period 1880-1910 as dark grey in a monochrome photo...

Unfortunately, the film/plates available at that time was orthochromatic. Panchromatic emulsions became available towards the end of that period but were not widely used for some time. The orthochromatic film was insensitive to red (i.e. reds appeared as black or dark greys). So, the reason why it is so difficult to tell is quite simply that the contemporary emulsions simpl could not register any difference between reds and dark greys. That's one of the reasons why there is so much debate about the colour.

 

That said, anything that brings us more GWR red vehicles gets my vote :)

 

Nick

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Two comments on the Red livery.

 

This was discussed on the GWR ehgroup some time ago. As a result, someone did some tests mimicing the orthochromatic film available at the time of the transition and demonstrated that it was impossible to distinguish the colours from Black and White photographs.

 

Secondly, in "The Locomotive" Volume 1, No. 3, March 1896 (part of a study of virtually all the major Companies liveries, and quite a few of the smaller, the author states:

 

"A light red colour is adopted for the wagon stock with white lettering but the goods brakes are a dark grey."

 

Since this is contemporary observation, it must mean that the change was later than 1896.

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Thanks for the comments.

 

Steve and Nick - I had overlooked the colour distortion in films from that era, namely that reds would appear darker than expected. Should have realised that from the use of red lights in dark rooms.

 

Mark - I am intending to model the period 1905-1910, and intend to assume that the change in colour was around 1902 - so all wagons built after that date will be in grey, and those before will be in red (except the few that have been repainted since 1902 or thereabouts).

 

 

I still think that the original intention has merit - to try to find the relation between the shade of red of the original wagon and the shade of grey on the photo - even if the original method was flawed.

 

So I am now looking at photographs of locomotives from that period, studying the relationships between the dark green of the boiler and the two reds of buffers and underframes. At the moment I don't see any consistent pattern.

 

In many ways this just reinforces my earlier conclusion - you are free to choose your shade of grey or red during the period 1880 to 1910, and there will be inconclusive evidence both for and against your choice.

 

David

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...I am intending to model the period 1905-1910, and intend to assume that the change in colour was around 1902 - so all wagons built after that date will be in grey, and those before will be in red (except the few that have been repainted since 1902 or thereabouts)...

David, that's pretty much the line I take with my growing handful of Edwardian stock, though I think that a few red survivals would be possible even if the change was pushed back into the mid-90s. If all else fails, there's always rule No1 and, in the current state of knowledge, no one can honestly claim to know better.

 

... in "The Locomotive" Volume 1, No. 3, March 1896 (part of a study of virtually all the major Companies liveries, and quite a few of the smaller, the author states:...

 

...Since this is contemporary observation, it must mean that the change was later than 1896.

Mark, yes, that's a key piece of evidence in the jigsaw, but you cannot leap from one statement to the next without additional supporting evidence. The date given is a publication date, the article would probably have been written some weeks, months or, perhaps, years before publication. Does the article actually claim to represent contemporary observation by the author? Could it be information derived from an earlier written article or conversation about another person's observation? Do we know whether the author had actually seen any GWR wagons? And so on...

 

I've not the original article (maybe I'll get a chance to one day), but have only seen this quote and the publication date repeated as "evidence". They are that, but only partial.

 

Nick

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  • RMweb Gold

Seeing as there is a photo of a GWR tank at barmouth in GWR livery dated 1958 some latitude is allowable. I remember seeing a tender with GWR on it at Reading circa 1960. Wogons get painted less often.

Don

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Guest Simon Dunkley

Posted

Further to Mark Austin's remarks about the experiments conducted on GWR red, Peter Totman told me some years ago that a variety of shades of red oxide were tried, with and without weathering.

 

Not only was it impossible to identify red versus grey wagons, but the different shades of red were identical to each other and the grey.

 

I have a GWR iron mink in S scale painted red: I simply used car aerosol red oxide primer. Once lettered and given some light weathering, it may well appear to be the "correct" colour, but we will never know - even if someone was around who remembered the GWR wagons in red, colour memory is notoriously faulty.

 

I would also be careful about the use of the word "light": descriptions of the era are very vague - I have seen one coach livery described by authors of contemporaneous articles in the railway press as white panels with a dark colour similar to the LNWR, GWR chocolate and Midland crimson lake. If you look on this link (search for "light red"), you can see that the phrase light red was also applied to red oxide and Venetian red: get the car aerosol out, and leave it at that!

 

Incidentally, this all implies that broad gauge traffic wagons should be red: any grey ones (other than brake vans, presuming service stock was black) are wrong!

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Guest Simon Dunkley

Posted

Addendum.

 

The result of red oxide primer plus some light grey washes for weathering is lurking behind the passenger train in this picture:

eastlynn2.jpg

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Simon,

 

I completely agree, a red oxide primer is probably the best we can do without surviving paint samples. I've just used Halfords red primer on the two wagons that I've painted so far.

 

Nick

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I comented on Mikkels original blog entry that I had heard somewhere that because of the limitations of the photographic process in the late 19th/early 20thC prototypes were actually painted in a shade known as 'photographic grey'. I cannot find the original source of that comment - probably it was in one of the modelling mags in the 70's or '80's...

 

Another factor that would figure in the photographic reproduction is the fact that the colour shade is very dependent on the proportions of the paint mix. Apparently 'handsful' was one of the quantities of measurement, Red Lead....? H&S nightmare!

 

Regs

 

Ian

 

 

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  • RMweb Gold

David, those are interesting experiments. It's interesting to note that while the cattle van furthest to the left and the mink in the middle appear to have a similar-ish shade in red, they come out differently in the monochrome version (well, to my eyes at least). That may also have something to do with the bracing influencing the visual impression. Which just goes to show how tricky it all is.

But as Nick says: as long as we get to see some red wagons, I'm happy :)

 

Perhaps the safest approach is to apply weathering as an excuse to vary the shades. That seems to have been the approach applied rather smartly in the top photo on Raymond's site here: http://www.raymondwalley.com/reviews/wagon/gwr_4plank-opens.html

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