Noel

> You could read that as referring to the lamp light colour, not the lamp body colour... No, it was mandatory to have a tail lamp shining red when lit on the rear of a light engine - rule 126 and 127 in the 1904 rule book, and still in force today. So the light had to be red for a tail light, the train would have been reported by the first signalman if not. The colour of the lamp case did not matter - it was black, red, or white at various times without the rule changing. Noel

Looking through the GWR suggestions committee minutes at Kew today, I found this suggestion from 1914: This certainly seems to indicate that not all head and tail lamps were red (and it is long enough after 1903 it can't be referring to ones still to be repainted). The practice later, and probably then, was to use a loco headlamp with a red filter as a tail lamp when running light engine (many lamps had a movable filter built in). So the suggestion would make sense if at the time head lamps were painted black and tail lamps red (I think the latter is certainly true). Sadly the minutes of the lamp Committee are not preserved at Kew. Noel

I would love to see contemporary documentary evidence about when head lamps were painted red. Several people say 1903, but no documentation has been referenced. Others say July 1915, again without documentation though it does seem a very specific date. I had completely overlooked Atkins Goods Train Working in my research, and I own a copy! One query in it I have found the answer to, he asks (page 24) what happened in 1936 to the stock of red tail lamps with white stripes kept for use on special and divided trains: they were painted white with 2 red stripes (Supplement 1 to the 1936 GA, March 1937). Another related query - when were tail lamps first painted red? Atkins says they were painted red from 1903, but I would not be surprised if they were painted red earlier. Noel

I am producing a booklet for the 2mm Scale Association on Head Codes and lamps, and the issue of when the GWR started painting its lamps red lamps is one I have been trying to track down. I've been through all the documents I can find that look relevant in the National Archives without finding anything so far, though I am still looking. I did find a painting from around 1906 that showed lamps painted black, and the artist was well known and from other photos seems to have been fairly accurate. From photos it is clear the diamond and S were painted over after 1903, but whether red or black is impossible to say from the photos of the time. I had an idea about why the headlamps lamps on railmotors might have been painted red - the tail lamps had to be red, and the headcode was a single white light, so painting them both red would mean you could just move a filter on the lamps to change between red and white when reversing direction. BTW, I did recently find documentation that confirmed the S on the back of lamps before 1903 was red on white (or at least it was in 1883). Noel