Help With German Coach Colours, Please

[Cheshire001]

I model mainly British and US, but have also acquired a small collection of Marklin Z-gauge.   Time permitting I intend to make a small scenic layout for it to run on.   It's nothing too serious with purchase policy dictated by what "looks nice" or is at a good price rather than  historical accuracy.

 

I recently bought a collection of coaches off a well-known auction site.   They are all in different colours which started me thinking about the significance of the different paint schemes.   I tried reading up about it.   Unfortunately most of the web pages I can find list colours and then their uses.   Not knowing the (German) name of the colour on my coaches this is a bit problematic.   Not understanding the German jargon doesn't help!

 

So can anyone give me a quick idea of the significance of the colours ?   Obviously it changes over time, so which schemes go together?   Do they indicate 1st/2nd class accommodation, class of train or what?

 

The collection is as follows.   All carry the [DB] logo:

 

-An all-over blue 1st class coach and an all-over green 2nd which I'm guessing belong to an earlier period than the others.

 

-A baggage car with cream top-half and blue lower half.   Looks quite nice behind my BR151 in same livery but haven't any other coaches in this scheme.

 

The next 3 have similar schemes but different colours.

-Baggage car as above but green top, beige lower half.   

 

-A Speisewagen (dining car?) wine red top, beige lower half.

 

-A 1st class coach with orange top and beige lower half.

 

And a single Silberlinge which I gather is a commuter coach and possibly the odd man out?

 

Any help appreciated, thanks.

 

[sncf231e]

A picture would help but I assume that you have a number of coaches in so called POP colours: http://www.railfaneurope.net/liveries/popcolours.html

 

The blue first and green second are indeed earlier but there was certainly an overlapping period. Combining Silberlingen with other colours is also prototypical.

 

Regards

Fred

[Allegheny1600]

As Fred says, POP colours are very varied (and interesting!).

To supplement, here are further liveries;

 

and in more recent times;

 

 

I think the green/blue liveries were a remnant from era III but lasted pretty much until early era V.

Supplanting these liveries were the blue/cream (IC) and red/cream (TEE) liveries of era IV (which could have other liveries mixed in!).

The dawn of era V saw the blue/blue and/or red/pink stripe coaches while by the end of era V saw current white/red (IC) or red (IR) coaches.

Today (era VI) sees "only" these two liveries on main-line trains but it is not boring as there are also regional and private operator liveries all mixed in, sometimes the private operators run trains or coaches in 'classic' liveries too so everything is very colourful.

This is only a very brief (and rough) summary, there is a dedicated German railways forum on Tapatalk in the English language if you wish to learn more.

Cheers,

John.

[justin1985]

6 hours ago, Cheshire001 said:

I model mainly British and US, but have also acquired a small collection of Marklin Z-gauge.   Time permitting I intend to make a small scenic layout for it to run on.   It's nothing too serious with purchase policy dictated by what "looks nice" or is at a good price rather than  historical accuracy.

 

I can say from experience - it's a slippery slope! I started off buying a few Z models like this, and a few years later I've ended up with a pretty large collection of Höllentalbahn focused stock ...

 

It sounds like the coaches you have are the ones that seemed to form the core of the range through the 1980s-90s - I think the same colours stayed in the catalogue for ages under the same codes, so there's a lot out there. As has been explained by others, the different colours generally indicate different service types, but in practice would be somewhat mixed up, and most schemes survived for long after they were officially replaced. 

 

If you're interested to upgrade them a bit, you can get some very nice 3D printed interiors for most Märklin Z coaches here (only the very most recent ones come with interiors as standard): https://www.modelplant.eu/Spur-Z/Inneneinrichtungen/

 

They also look a lot nicer if you clean the wheels (use IPA alcohol) and chemically blacken them (Carr's or Birchwood Casey gun blackening fluid).

 

J

[Cheshire001]

Many thanks for you replies.   Just the sort of info. I was looking for.

 

Fred - Yes I must look up how to post pictures.   I used to use PhotoBucket and have been too lazy to look up replacement methods.   [As I type this I see the big yellow button that says "Insert other media";  maybe a clue.]   Nevertheless, your schematic perfectly illustrates my coaches with the overall green and blue ones top left and the various coloured window bands on the others.   The link is very helpful.   I think the train in your photo has got three different coaches.

 

John - More great info., a really helpful intro. to the colour schemes.

 

Justin - I know what you mean about slippery slopes.   I was just going to have one US loco with a handful of freight cars to see what it was like.   Then I found I had enough rolling stock to populate our NMRA exhibition layout!   Will look into your idea about blackening the wheels, they are very prominent aren't they?

 

Thanks again,

Roy.

 

[brigo]

A useful site to visit is this one, which lists the various coach types and the liveries they acquired. Hit the "Back to Germany" button at the top left to access other pages.

 

http://www.mlgtraffic.net/DB_E_VEDB26.xml

 

The blue and green coaches was the standard livery up to the end of the 60's (end of Era 3). The POP livery was purely experimental and few coaches received it. Next came the ocean blue and cream as the standard livery around 1970 (start of Era 4) and lasted until about 1990 (Era 5) During this time the TEE and IC coaches received the red and cream livery.

With Era 5 there were various "Neue Bahn" liveries introduced for IC, IR, S-Bahn and local trains.

 

MOROP have issued NEM data sheets for the various "Era" available at, sorry German text

 

https://www.morop.org/downloads/nem/de/nem806D_d.pdf

 

Brian

[Cheshire001]

Brian,

The mlgtraffic link is another excellent source, thank you.   These references have given me a good basic understanding of the topic.

 

Referring to Fred's picture illustrating the mixture of coaches in one train, I came across Marklin set 87549 which looks like a close match for those who may wish to model this train.