Jump to content
 

Pre-grouping livery clippings


Mikkel

6,323 views

 

Here are a couple of PDF files that may be of interest to pre-grouping modellers.

 

The first document is an 1896 article from Moore's Monthly Magazine (later renamed "The Locomotive") on British pre-grouping liveries. It includes brief livery descriptions for a number of the railways (but not all).

 

MooresMonthlyLiveries.pdf

 

 

The second document is my personal selection of quotes and news items on GWR liveries and selected other liveries from the archives of the Railway Magazine during the period 1898-1924.

 

RailwayMagazineLiveries_OK.pdf

 

 

A few notes:

 

Apart from the general observations on British and GWR liveries, the documents contain two key sources for the theory that GWR wagons were red until 1904. I'm a follower of this theory, but thought I'd have a look at the contemporary sources to see for myself. I have to say though that the references to wagon liveries are very brief, and to me emphasize the very scant attention given to wagons by railway observers of the time.

 

More generally speaking, this material also suggests to me that contemporary magazine articles are a somewhat problematic source of livery details. I can't help feeling that the livery descriptions herein seem rather subjective and not necessarily well researched. That said, the material does provide some snippets of information on various details of GWR loco and carriage liveries that I had not previously encountered.

 

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. If nothing else, it all gives a sense of the ethos of the time! Many thanks to the RMwebbers who have helped with this.

 

 

Edited by Mikkel

  • Like 15
  • Informative/Useful 1

82 Comments


Recommended Comments



I do wonder which/how many carriages received the experimental all-chocolate livery in 1903. I know a D29 (or possibly a D40) was amongst them, so possibly a rake of corridor clerestories. But were none corridor clerestories included as well?

 

Dana

 

Add 70' M.8 No.822 to the list. Two excellent photos in Russell's Coaches appendix Vol 2 (Figs 428 & 429) mis-captioned as 'Crimson Lake'.:—

 

M8 822a

Note the numbers in the eaves (without any fancy shading thereon), and also the pre 1911* Garter on the centre door. Also of interest is the mouldings are picked out in black & there is a light (Gold? White?) line on the upper panels.

 

* The post 1911 Garter has 4 white 'flashes' at the diagonal centres & these usually show up even on under-lit photos. Lake lettering & numbering has very fancy shading, again with a white component that stands out.

 

Pete S.

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold

Thanks Pete, useful tips for dating all brown/lake in photos. I don't have Russell's appendinxes, but I'm beginning to think that I should have!

Link to comment

 Sorry I haven't mastered the art of copying photos.

 

With help from my son who has a Flickr account I can now attach a better copy of my photo. The file reduction involved in putting the photos on the blog does mean some detail is lost. I have been able to zoom in to some of the detail which is quite revealing showing small flaws in the lining out.

 

https://flic.kr/p/HDi7Sc

 

One thing I find interesting is that despite the paintwork being perhaps 150 years old the varnish has weathered to nothing more than an off white, a long way from what we term "cream." I wonder whether the oft quoted theory that cream upper panels were based on weathered varnish involves some artistic licence, in my personal opinion cream looks better with chocolate than off white and maybe those who decided these things thought the same.

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold

Many thanks John for sharing this. Strange how the punctuation mark between "319" and "D" is off-set to one side.

 

Interesting what you say about white and cream. The clipping from the Railway Magazine (August 1903) that I quoted above does speak of coach livery experiments and a "richer and warmer appearance than the original colours". I'm rather wary of relying too much on such observations, but who knows!

Link to comment

The Bristol Museum page for 319 is here:— http://museums.bristol.gov.uk/details.php?irn=138493

 

I've e-mailed them with an enquiry as to what has been done to it since its recovery, as it looks as though the panels were overpainted with a solid colour (white?) which has been removed to reveal all.

How this was done is, obviously, quite important.

 

BG 250 has a much richer cream on the surface, but that I put down to the fact that it was painted with hot tar when it became a foresters' refuge & discoloured as a result; deeper layers (of which I think there are two) are noticeably lighter, but show clear 'banding' at each layer of varnish . The bottom-most layer is quite possibly B&E Lake as it corresponds to McDermot's description of it becoming "to all appearance black when soiled with wear.”*

 

P.

 

*History of the GWR Vol 2 Ch 16, p. 301

Link to comment

Got a response from the Senior Curator at M Shed...

 

319 was overpainted with whitewash on top of Red Lead (!), so all that had to be removed to reveal what we see today. He makes no comment about the whitewash (so I presume that fell off fairly easily), but the Red Lead was carefully abraded away with...

 

Vim!

 

Never thought of using that one in my archaeological diggings - 40 grit in a belt sander, yes, Vim, not so much. I see the logic - it'd act as a *very* controllable abrasive paste allowing the bare minimum to be removed.

 

I think this explains the paleness of the cream too. It hasn't darkened/yellowed/warmed up as a result of the varnish, as the original varnish has been Vimmed away, along with any ingrained traffic film which is why it looks so clean.

 

Big thanks to Andy King at M Shed for the background on this.

 

P.

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold

I'm impressed it was possible to remove the red lead so neatly in the first place, let alone with Vim!

 

So the shade of cream on 319 might be close to what it originally looked like without varnish and weathering? Very interesting, thanks for sharing this.

Link to comment

 

 

There aren't many models of the all brown livery, it would be interesting to see - although less glamorous perhaps.

Mikkel,

 

With a “composite clerestory” to do as part of a circa 1907 formation, I thought I would do it in the 1903 for something different. Its not quite finished but here it is.... or it would be if I could figure out how to attach the image!

 

It started as a late Margate LNER clerestory composite, so the body moulding is a little crisper but with the odd buffers (replaced with my last set of Triang buffers). Lower footboards have been added and the bogies are in the process of being made into something more like Dean bogies.

 

Body colour is Humbrol No.10 Service Brown; drop lights and bolection mouldings are Humbrol RC403 Crimson Lake. Transfers are HMRS Pressfix, and all varnished with Humbrol Satin Varnish. Footboards are Humbrol 93 Desert Yellow. The roof is actually grey with brown on the rain strips and clerestory sides, but looks more overall grey in the picture — possibly due to the matt varnish and poor lighting.

 

Low tech, but I rather like it.

 

Dana

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold

Dana, that sounds intriguing. Unfortunately, attaching photos to blog comments isn't very intuitive. They have to be stored somewhere else and then you copy them in here.

 

Alternatively, you could put the photo in a thread in the forum instead? It's easier and I'm sure others would be interested too.

Link to comment

Dana, that sounds intriguing. Unfortunately, attaching photos to blog comments isn't very intuitive. They have to be stored somewhere else and then you copy them in here.

 

Alternatively, you could put the photo in a thread in the forum instead? It's easier and I'm sure others would be interested too.

Good idea. I'll post it to your Pragmatic Pre-Grouping site.

Link to comment

Interestingly there is no mention in your references of a GWR carriage livery change in 1912 unless I missed it.

  • Agree 1
Link to comment
On 09/12/2017 at 23:33, Mikkel said:

Incidentally I note that the article does not mention lining of horseboxes, something that I have always doubted was common practice (except for a single N5 photo which seems to show lining). 

 

One of the big problems with these kinds of articles is not what they say, but what they omit to say.

 

I tend to agree with you that lining of horse boxes was not common prior to WWI. (In any event it seems to have ceased during WWI.)

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold
23 hours ago, Brassey said:

Interestingly there is no mention in your references of a GWR carriage livery change in 1912 unless I missed it.

 

Yes, agree. A June 1920 comment merely states:
 

It was in 1908 that the change from the previous chocolate and cream livery to the present crimson lake was decided upon.  [Reply to J. A. O. FARNELL.]

 

I think, though, that we must treat the observations in the Railway Magazine much as we would a Wikipedia entry, i.e. with care :)

Edited by Mikkel
  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold
21 hours ago, Miss Prism said:

 

One of the big problems with these kinds of articles is not what they say, but what they omit to say.

 

I tend to agree with you that lining of horse boxes was not common prior to WWI. (In any event it seems to have ceased during WWI.)

 

It would also not really be logical, since other brown stock wasn't lined. Although I'll admit that horseboxes must have been the aristocrats of brown stock, given the cargo and customers!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold

You may well be right. Horses were live creatures and often racing stock, so attention was a priority, but the human fascination with road vehicles beats everything!

 

Incidentally I have often wondered how big the carriage truck traffic really was. And who used it. Surely it would have been rare that anyone actually brought their own carriage on a trip - so I suppose much of the traffic would have been carriages underway from manufacturer to purchaser or similar?

 

Edit: I'm talking about horse drawn days.

Edited by Mikkel
  • Like 1
Link to comment

I'd expect at least a sizeable proportion of carriage truck traffic to be Lord & Lady X plus entourage in the private coach, with horses in the horsebox, and the carriage on the carriage truck, a sort of early motorrail.  Probably attached as tail traffic.

 

atb

Simon

Edited by Simond
  • Like 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to comment

I am sure this has been raised before but I wonder whether Horseboxes were ever finished in Crimson Lake.

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold
17 hours ago, Simond said:

I'd expect at least a sizeable proportion of carriage truck traffic to be Lord & Lady X plus entourage in the private coach, with horses in the horsebox, and the carriage on the carriage truck, a sort of early motorrail.  Probably attached as tail traffic.

 

atb

Simon

 

Thanks Simon. It seems an awful lot of trouble to go to, with the horses and all. But then people didn't exactly travel light in those days!

 

Chris, if you are reading this you need a carriage truck for a certain family :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment

But the roads were awful, and potentially dangerous, so if you were heading out from London to the country estate for your summer vacation, you'd probably go to the trouble.

 

atb

Simon

  • Like 2
Link to comment
  • RMweb Premium
6 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 

Thanks Simon. It seems an awful lot of trouble to go to, with the horses and all. But then people didn't exactly travel light in those days!

 

Chris, if you are reading this you need a carriage truck for a certain family :)

Well the wealthy did,  the majority just walked with what they could carry all the way to London if required. It's one of the reasons working for a Lord and lady was a prized job. Food and lodgings supplied company transport if required and half a day off a week..

  • Like 2
Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold
11 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 

Thanks Simon. It seems an awful lot of trouble to go to, with the horses and all. But then people didn't exactly travel light in those days!

 

Chris, if you are reading this you need a carriage truck for a certain family :)

 

Mikkel,

I think I have one but it is just a flat truck not a proper covered van.  I have a carriage to put on it as well, but I suppose it would be sheeted so I may just put a sheet with a lump of something under it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold
17 hours ago, TheQ said:

Well the wealthy did,  the majority just walked with what they could carry all the way to London if required. It's one of the reasons working for a Lord and lady was a prized job. Food and lodgings supplied company transport if required and half a day off a week..

 

Yes, very true. In fact I've been thinking recently that the passenger situation at Farthing is biased towards the better off. I need some more Third Class passengers!

 

32255981867_5a92e714f5_o.jpg.4bb2e59c1d99f0edeb452a641eb85fee.jpg

 

 

12 hours ago, ChrisN said:

Mikkel,

I think I have one but it is just a flat truck not a proper covered van.  I have a carriage to put on it as well, but I suppose it would be sheeted so I may just put a sheet with a lump of something under it.

 

Yes it would be a shame to hide the carriage under a sheet. Mike has done a nice flat truck with a carriage on it:

 

 

Edited by Mikkel
  • Like 2
Link to comment
  • RMweb Premium

Interesting thoughts about the affluent travelling with their entourage , so I had a go at running a special on that basis. Let's imagine a train booked from the south to someones  highland estates. A carriage, accommodation for horses and grooms and travelling space for the family. All dual braked for LNWR/CR running. The coach would ideally be a D57 family saloon rather than a compartment first. A bit of fun but maybe I'll build one and get it right one day. 

 

DSC_2141.JPG.4e4295bc8b7fa915c447a16d5c3b6094.JPG

  • Like 2
  • Craftsmanship/clever 1
Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...