Bulleid Coaches

[Mallard60022]

57 minutes ago, mattingleycustom said:

I think the U Class is long overdue, there were 50 of the things after all. Smaller classes (e.g. Adams Radial, Beattie Well Tank) have been produced.

Glenn

Agreed. I would also hedge for an H15 with the Chonker Boiler shape.

Hornby could do an N15 Boiler version and I hope they do 'the other' S15. All of these could/would compliment the new Coaches.

However, the 'Big Tanks' are there for the taking, ready for those that prefer the shunting style layout rather than the main line dashers. I visualise something to a high standard at about £200-240.

This may be the last fling for steam era people?

Just off topic briefly, I believe that the way forward for the manufacturers is to start to cater more widely for the 'younger' guys and gals  with more EMUs and DMUs, better Shunters and more of a move away from the pretty, Pendonesque range of scenic stuff. 

I am unsure of how attractive the period is for modellers between the end of steam and the mid 80s when things started to become more 'colourful'. There are many Blue era layouts that are just superb, however was it not a rather uninspiring time? To be discussed elsewhere of course and nowt to do with me as I am stuck in 1960s Devon. 

Phil

[Legend]

I have to say I think Simon Kohler has a blind spot and it is called BR Blue . You get the occasional relivery but I think the last new items for that era were the Class 56 ,and blue was probably incidental in that . 
 

Bachmann and Heljan are the BR blue masters , with Bachmann now delivering their sealed beam 45 I believe . Accurascale are snapping at their heals .  Hornby is reverting to its traditional big steam engine territory , W1s etc  and I reckon 2021 will follow the same pattern 

[Ian Hargrave]

If you model the SR post 1945 a possibility for Bachmann production with the new tooling coaches. could be the N15X  which could be seen at Waterloo on semi fast workings to Basingstoke and points West most days late 1940’s/early 1950’s.

[Ceptic]

On 23/12/2020 at 08:23, Graham_Muz said:

I have been able to take a close look and handle the first stunning EPs and my views are below. 

https://grahammuz.com/2020/12/23/Bachmann-bulleid-coaches-engineering-prototypes-arrive/

 Graham, many thanks to you, along with Bachmann, for this very descriptive update.

 

One question I'd like to ask tho'.  Has Bachmann given any thought to the number of roof rain-strips per side, per coach, per era ? , as Hornby did on their 59 footers.  I.e. Two per side on SR versions and one per side on later BR.

One last nit-pick is that the EP's rain-strips look to be a tad low, especially at the ends, as were Bachmann's original versions.

 

At the very least, these coaches are, certainly, going to brighten up the New Year.

Merry Christmas, Frank.

[Phatbob]

These look really good.  I shall be delighted and somewhat more impecunious once they finally arrive.  I'd also like the opportunity to blag a few Diag 2406 BCKs in BR(S) green, pretty please. :-)

[robertcwp]

On 24/12/2020 at 11:30, Legend said:

Bachmann and Heljan are the BR blue masters , with Bachmann now delivering their sealed beam 45 I believe . Accurascale are snapping at their heals .  Hornby is reverting to its traditional big steam engine territory , W1s etc  and I reckon 2021 will follow the same pattern 

Except that blue DMUs are rare things from Bachmann. No sign of a 117 in blue.

 

Getting back to Bulleid stock, I would like to see more versions in the later BR green, which could be done either with or without the yellow first-class bands on the composites and brake composites.

[Phatbob]

1 hour ago, robertcwp said:

Except that blue DMUs are rare things from Bachmann. No sign of a 117 in blue.

 

Getting back to Bulleid stock, I would like to see more versions in the later BR green, which could be done either with or without the yellow first-class bands on the composites and brake composites.

Agreed, but I'd vote for without yellow stripe as they're easier to add than to remove.

 

[robertcwp]

31 minutes ago, Phatbob said:

Agreed, but I'd vote for without yellow stripe as they're easier to add than to remove.

 

So would I.

[brushman47544]

12 hours ago, Phatbob said:

Agreed, but I'd vote for without yellow stripe as they're easier to add than to remove.

 

 

12 hours ago, robertcwp said:

So would I.

I really don’t care, as long as they use a better BR green.

[Dunsignalling]

13 hours ago, Phatbob said:

Agreed, but I'd vote for without yellow stripe as they're easier to add than to remove.

 

AFAIK, the yellow 1st and red catering stripes didn't begin to appear on the Southern until 1961 or 1962 anyway. 

 

I was thankful to find that my new Hornby Mk.1 RB has none.

 

John

[trevor7598]

2 hours ago, brushman47544 said:

 

I really don’t care, as long as they use a better BR green.

At one time Bachmann had BR(S) green almost spot on, and I would not argue about

the shade they use on their CEP and 2EPB. But then they used a horrible dark ( far too dark )

green for BR(S) steam stock, in the mistaken belief the steam stock was painted a darker

shade than EMU's. I had an argument with them at Ally Pally when I saw these dark green

loco hauled coaches, but they maintained they were right.

I think the way the dark green stock hung around on shop shelves told a different story.

 

I have never heard too many complaints about the shade that Hornby use, and to my eyes

looks pretty good.

Very much looking forward to Bachmann's Bulleids, lets hope they get the colour right.

The horror is the one on the right in my image.

[Butler Henderson]

My dark green BCK is banished for use on preserved mode whereby the wrong shade can be readily explained away!

[Chuffed 1]

I’ve spent many hours looking at innumerable colour photos of Southern BR-era coaches, where possible those with a green loco present, the better to have a reference point for chromatic accuracy (i.e. film deterioration).

 

I have come to the conclusion, that leaving those coaches painted malachite that were never repainted into BR blood and custard or green, there were two shades used in painting/repainting.

 

The first shade was lighter, and I presume used up existing stocks of malachite, and was used for repainting  faded ( mainly Maunsell and pre-grouping) stock and painting new Mk1’s.  After mid-1959 stock the green was a darker shade (though not quite as dark as Bachmann’s latter shade), and I presume that was to provide better coverage of former blood and custard-liveried stock.

 

Before my theory is howled down, may I ask interested commentators to trawl through about six hundred colour photos from circa 1956(for malachite) to the end of Southern steam in 1967?!

 

My layout is set in 1961; I can run both, as well as faded and revarnished stock.

1957 would be at the light end of the shade, 1967 the darker.

[Chuffed 1]

Oh, and on the subject of fading, whilst the majority of the (mainly electric) commuter lines ran north-south, the longer distance lines ran east-west.

 

Therefore fading on the north-south lines would be equally spread on either side but the longer-distance routes would have the sun concentrated on one (southern) side.

 

Add to this, photographers back in the day would take their shots with the sun at their backs and therefore would mostly be photographing a faded green...?

 

Perhaps, in this case, the camera sins by omission...?

Edited January 14, 2021 by Chuffed 1
Punctuation!

[Nick C]

2 hours ago, Chuffed 1 said:

Oh, and on the subject of fading, whilst the majority of the (mainly electric) commuter lines ran north-south, the longer distance lines ran east-west.

 

Therefore fading on the north-south lines would be equally spread on either side but the longer-distance routes would have the sun concentrated on one (southern) side.

 

Add to this, photographers back in the day would take their shots with the sun at their backs and therefore would mostly be photographing a faded green...?

 

Perhaps, in this case, the camera sins by omission...?

I believe the Isle of Wight steam railway, which runs almost directly east-west, sees quite a lot more fading on the southern side of their stock. Conversely I believe the North Norfolk and West Somerset see worse effects on the north sides of theirs - as they face the sea.

[Wickham Green too]

3 hours ago, Chuffed 1 said:

....... the longer distance lines ran east-west. Therefore fading on the ........ longer-distance routes would have the sun concentrated on one (southern) side. .......

Are you trying to imply that the Southern was so slow that its trains faded between leaving Waterloo and arriving in Padstow ......... or that the Southern weren't aware of the risk of paint fading and never turned their rolling stock ?

[Dunsignalling]

On 14/01/2021 at 13:35, Chuffed 1 said:

I’ve spent many hours looking at innumerable colour photos of Southern BR-era coaches, where possible those with a green loco present, the better to have a reference point for chromatic accuracy (i.e. film deterioration).

 

I have come to the conclusion, that leaving those coaches painted malachite that were never repainted into BR blood and custard or green, there were two shades used in painting/repainting.

 

The first shade was lighter, and I presume used up existing stocks of malachite, and was used for repainting  faded ( mainly Maunsell and pre-grouping) stock and painting new Mk1’s.  After mid-1959 stock the green was a darker shade (though not quite as dark as Bachmann’s latter shade), and I presume that was to provide better coverage of former blood and custard-liveried stock.

 

Before my theory is howled down, may I ask interested commentators to trawl through about six hundred colour photos from circa 1956(for malachite) to the end of Southern steam in 1967?!

 

My layout is set in 1961; I can run both, as well as faded and revarnished stock.

1957 would be at the light end of the shade, 1967 the darker.

You also need to consider the undercoats used, as that will affect the tone exhibited by the top coat if different.

 

This paragraph is (at least in part) surmise: I'd expect that, before application of green over crimson/cream, the cream would first receive either a coat of surplus crimson or red-oxide primer so the green would go on over a relatively uniform base colour. The alternative would be to undercoat the entire side, and BR appear to have generally favoured grey undercoat. The latter would clearly be more expensive so I'd suggest that the method used would be dictated by need, i.e. condition of the worst coach in the set being dealt with (sets normally went through works whole to ensure uniformity of finish and that they would come due for their next attention together). Even with similar top coats, a coach treated by one method would appear a slightly different shade to one dealt with using the other.   

 

There would undoubtedly have been stocks of SR malachite kept for vehicles not requiring repaints into crimson or crimson/cream but these would progressively reduce as time went on and  I consider it unlikely that newer BR Mk1 stock would be deliberately selected to receive the obsolete SR colour.

 

However, there is another point: whilst it is known that all Maunsell and Bulleid stock remaining in service was green by the end of 1959,  by no means everything was BR green. Scheduled repainting of SR and BR (s) main line stock was normally carried out at ten-year intervals, so coaches receiving SR malachite between 1948 and the advent of BR crimson/cream would not have been "due" until 1958-9. Until then, those would just have carried on being re-varnished as required.

 

John

Edited January 17, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Chuffed 1]

Wouldn’t disagree with most of that, but the point I was making (obviously not very successfully!) was that circa 1959 a darker shade of coach green was being used for repaints, as well as for new stock.

Using wherever possible correlation with BR loco green to adjudge whether the film itself had faded, I came to the conclusion that for whatever reason, the coaching stock green was darker from circa 1959 onwards.

In my opinion, much of photography would have been on the sunnier and thus more faded sides of east-west stock, in the ten years or so between repaints no doubt these sides often faded considerably. The blood and custard coaches used regularly on the Fairford branch had been considerably faded by closure in 1962, amply

demonstrating the power of the sun on relatively unstable pigments.

And to answer the question of the previous poster, no I don’t imagine that BR (S) ever had the luxury of ‘doing an L&B’ and turning coaches to even out fading!

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Chuffed 1 said:

Wouldn’t disagree with most of that, but the point I was making (obviously not very successfully!) was that circa 1959 a darker shade of coach green was being used for repaints, as well as for new stock.

Using wherever possible correlation with BR loco green to adjudge whether the film itself had faded, I came to the conclusion that for whatever reason, the coaching stock green was darker from circa 1959 onwards.

In my opinion, much of photography would have been on the sunnier and thus more faded sides of east-west stock, in the ten years or so between repaints no doubt these sides often faded considerably. The blood and custard coaches used regularly on the Fairford branch had been considerably faded by closure in 1962, amply

demonstrating the power of the sun on relatively unstable pigments.

And to answer the question of the previous poster, no I don’t imagine that BR (S) ever had the luxury of ‘doing an L&B’ and turning coaches to even out fading!

 

 

BR green in photographs seems to vary quite substantially in appearance under different lighting conditions. So much so, that I'm not convinced it did change.

 

Various sources indicate that all remaining Bulleid and Maunsell stock was "back in green by 1959". I take that to mean the end of 1959, though it could be interpreted as the end of 1958. Either way, even allowing for many having gone into BR green between 1956 and whenever BR green changed (if indeed it did) and some remaining in re-varnished SR malachite into 1959, none would have been due a scheduled second application of BR green, whatever the shade, before 1965.

 

Therefore, any change of shade in that period should have largely (my interpretation) or exclusively been confined to BR Mk1 vehicles, and explicitly exclude Maunsells.

 

When looking at two shades of green in photographs,, without legible paint dates, how is it possible to interpret that both are of BR origin?

 

Probably safer to stick with the (alleged) lighter shade on Bulleids, I'd think.

 

John

Edited January 21, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[trevor7598]

I don't there was such a thing as ' east, west facing stock ' when the number

of triangles on the network are considered. For instance Eastleigh works is

contained within one, and was used to turn coaches ( all Bulleid brakes were

built the same way round, half of those for three car sets needed turning ).

Coaches in the normal course of their duties would inadvertently get turned.

Those on preserved railways, where there are no turning facilities do

suffer from a 'weather' side. On the Bluebell Railway it's the west side.

I would have thought that paintwork on all SR stock would wear evenly

on both sides over the years.

[brushman47544]

1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

BR green in photographs seems to vary quite substantially in appearance under different lighting conditions. So much so, that I'm not convinced it did change.

 

Various sources indicate that all remaining Bulleid and Maunsell stock was "back in green by 1959". I take that to mean the end of 1959, though it could be interpreted as the end of 1958. Either way, even allowing for many having gone into BR green between 1956 and whenever BR green changed (if indeed it did) and some remaining in re-varnished SR malachite into 1959, none would have been due a scheduled second application of BR green, whatever the shade, before 1965.

 

Therefore, any change of shade in that period should have largely (my interpretation) or exclusively been confined to BR Mk1 vehicles, and explicitly exclude Maunsells.

 

When looking at two shades of green in photographs,, without legible paint dates, how is it possible to interpret that both are of BR origin?

 

Probably safer to stick with the (alleged) lighter shade on Bulleids, I'd think.

 

John

 

Bachmann to use Hornby's BR(S) green as on its Maunsell and Bulleid coaches would do me fine.

[trevor7598]

5 hours ago, brushman47544 said:

 

Bachmann to use Hornby's BR(S) green as on its Maunsell and Bulleid coaches would do me fine.

Can't argue with that!.

[Chuffed 1]

On 21/01/2021 at 13:31, Dunsignalling said:

BR green in photographs seems to vary quite substantially in appearance under different lighting conditions. So much so, that I'm not convinced it did change.

 

Various sources indicate that all remaining Bulleid and Maunsell stock was "back in green by 1959". I take that to mean the end of 1959, though it could be interpreted as the end of 1958. Either way, even allowing for many having gone into BR green between 1956 and whenever BR green changed (if indeed it did) and some remaining in re-varnished SR malachite into 1959, none would have been due a scheduled second application of BR green, whatever the shade, before 1965.

 

Therefore, any change of shade in that period should have largely (my interpretation) or exclusively been confined to BR Mk1 vehicles, and explicitly exclude Maunsells.

 

When looking at two shades of green in photographs,, without legible paint dates, how is it possible to interpret that both are of BR origin?

 

Probably safer to stick with the (alleged) lighter shade on Bulleids, I'd think.

 

John

John, you talk about scheduled repaints but not all sets had uniform Body Inspection dates and quite often coaches that needed repainting were repainted at different times to the rest of the set.

Obviously the newer built the set the less likely that this would happen, but there were an appreciable number where a set might have coaches in one livery and the rest of the set another.

Set 389 (ex SECR) was one such where the outer brake composites were repainted into blood and custard, the inner 1920 thirds remained in malachite, and the BCKs were eventually repainted into BR green before 1958. (See Gould ‘Bogie Carriages of the SECR’). Set 441 was another (picture in Mike King, below).

There were examples of 2-car sets, both motor and non-motor fitted where one vehicle was blood and custard, the other green.(set 331, for instance, picture in Mike King ‘Illustrated History of Southern Coaches which also has two different Continentals in a train at Victoria)

 

As for the repainting of blood and custard Bulleids and Maunsells, I have seen a 1959-dated photo of a 3-set Maunsell on the S&D in B&C. As we know the last SR blood and custards (Mk1’s) were repainted into green in 1962, what were the SR carriage paint shops doing for the intervening 3 years?  Obviously the bulk of their work would be repainting the Maunsells and Bulleids out shopped in Malachite, and for this I would pose that a different, darker green was used right up to the last green reprints in 1966.

Personally I prefer the lighter shade, but I have accepted that in my chosen year, 1961, there were SR coaches running around in a different shade. So accordingly some of my coaches will be in Precision Paints coach green, and some in SR emu green. Bachmann’s later SR green is close to the former, their earlier a slightly lighter (almost malachite) version of the latter.

Bachmann didn’t necessarily get it wrong.

 

Roger

Edited January 22, 2021 by Chuffed 1
Forgot to add name

[Dunsignalling]

The other thing that changed during the period in question was the transition from brush painting to airless spraying, which gave a rather richer finish (for want of a better word), possibly combined with the adoption of a decidedly more glossy kind of varnish. Either that, or there was something gentler going into carriage washers, as the early sixties shine seems to have been more durable than that of the previous decade.

 

As for mixes of green with crimson/cream, down this way, c/c Mk1 3-sets with a green Bulleid second inserted either side of the CK were a slightly bizarre, but not uncommon sight!

 

John

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Chuffed 1]

Rule 1(a):   There’s a prototype for everything!