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What Colour Were WD Austerity 0-6-0T Initially


Nearholmer
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Well, I know that the stock answer is: the first batch came out in khaki, but after that the standard colour was bronze green, that being the standard army colour for everything from about 1944. [See subsequent posts that throw doubt on that point]

 

So, what I would really like to understand, is what colour "bronze green" was.

 

I suspect that the answer may lie in BS381:1930, which contained mainly military colours, but I can't find a colour-card for that on-line. Or, that the colour was military spec SCC15 British Olive Drab.

 

BS381C:1948 only adds to my confusion, because it contains three variants: 222 Light; 223 Mid; and, 224 Deep Bronze Green, plus 298 Olive Drab (which looks the same as 223 to my eyes).

 

Contemporary "army toys" from Dinky and the likes might offer a clue, but they seem to range across the whole spectrum from Light to Deep, and Landrovers, which were standardised around the army colour at an early date don't help either, because while most were definitely Deep Bronze Green, I used to own an ex-Civil Defence one from 1957, on which the base colour (overpainted at some stage) was Light Bronze Green. Military modelling forums contain lots of suggestions about this "bronze green", most of them contradicting one another!

 

Preserved locos painted in the "bronze green" livery, with W^D markings and 75xxx numbers, seem to be Light, or possibly Mid Bronze Green (or maybe a RAL 7013).

 

Later, the army used NATO green, and at Longmoor dark blue, and there are oodles of colour photos of the locos in NATO green, but that isn't the colour I'm seeking.

 

Does anyone have definitive knowledge? Do any of the books about them make things clear?

 

Thanks in advance, Kevin

Edited by Nearholmer
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But, WD were mad-keen on paint specs and buying the stuff by the ocean-full, so possibly not.

 

The problem, if problem it is, for modellers seems to be that a lot of dull mid green colours, with different names and formulations, were used by the military in quick succession, and they all look broadly similar at first glance, but quite distinct when next to one another.

Edited by Nearholmer
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As I understand it Olive Drab was the colour worn by Lend Lease American tanks and vehicles such as Sherman tanks. We used it to touch them up and to paint support vehicles attached to them in order to avoid having two different shades of green in the same unit.

 

Its very unlikely therefore that it would be used for locomotives

 

As ti light and dark bronze green I can offer theories and suggestions but in all honesty I really don't know. Might be worth checking the thread on the new Bachmann Warflat, there is some discussion there on different colouring according to date

Edited by Caledonian
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An apparently authoritative source gives SCC15 Olive Drab as being introduced by an instruction dated April 1944 as the new basic colour for all British Army vehicles for NW Europe and Italy. It was certainly adopted for consistency with US kit, but I think used more widely than just for support vehicles.

 

What we really need is the WD order/specification issued for railway material, though.

 

I will have a look at that Warflat thread.

 

Looked. The working assumption there is the same as mine: that railway material colours followed the changes in military vehicle colours, and Bachmann have painted their late-WW2 variant of the wagon in the very SCC15 Olive Drab that I'm on about.

 

One error in that thread though: they say that Bronze Green was only used post-WW2. It was actually used pre-WW2 also, being the standard army colour in the 1930s, and is defined in BS381:1930. It was reintroduced post-WW2, then superseded later by NATO green.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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The best reference to WD locomotive colours  I can offer is the attached deliberately low resolution picture from the colour Rail collection.

This is of stored locomotives just after the war. All the usual warnings about the colour distortion of an image originally made over 70 years ago apply.

There are other images in the Colour Rail collection, which show similar greens, some are darker but weathering and colour bias of the slide could cause this.

 

The North British Painting diagrams just refer to the colour used as Khaki Green, even on locomotives painted with 21st Army Group shields.

 

The attached image shows that either the Austerity tank was painted in a different colour or has weathered differently.

 

 

Colour Rail WWII slides WD 5.jpg

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That is brilliant; many thanks!

 

I did find one other colour image, on the M&GNR Society page, which may have originated the colour-rail also. It appears to show the same loco, with whatever that is (nameplate?) on the boiler, unless that was a widely-applied AG symbol.

 

"Khaki Green" is, like "Bronze Green" a really unhelpful term, which can mean any number of things, isn't it? Khaki Brown was a defined colour, adopted during WW2 when there was a shortage of green pigment (1942-44, I think), but I'm lees sure about Khaki Green, and have already got way too far into this topic.

 

Thanks again - that colour will do for me.

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SCC, Olive Drab, from April 1944 is:

 

5 parts Humbrol 150 forest green

5 parts Humbrol 159 khaki drab

2 parts Humbrol 33 matt black.

 

It works well on AFVs and other military vehicles. This recipe is taken from the Mike Starmer's 'British Army Colours and Disruptive Camouflage in the UK, France and NW Europe 1936-45 ' which does have colour chips. 

 

Cheers,

 

Alastair M

Edited by A Murphy
Black paint!
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I found a PDF of basic info from Mr Starmer on line, and it is the best I have found, seems definitive on colours and dates, but I'm not into military matters far enough to justify buying the book, so that is very helpful.

 

But, unless the book tells us, which I rather doubt, we still can't be totally sure which of these colours were used on railway items and when, because it is possible that differed from what applied to "road" vehicles (you can tell I'm not military; I don't know what to call things that don't run on rails!). The working assumption that railway items matched non-railway items in colour/date seems a good one though, and probably can't be beaten without use of a time machine (and, I for one, wouldn't want to go there if I could).

 

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Having owned a couple of MGBs in brg, this thread somehow feels familiar. A couple of questions:

Was the same paint supplied to each of the manufacturers ready mixed, or mixed on site to a specification?

Could locos have been delivered in an approximate colour and then refinished by the army before going into storage or deployment?

Was this the same green being used in the 1960s when the last batch were sold back to Hunslet for overhaul and resale to the NCB?

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Apologies - I had put one part matt black paint in the SCC15 recipe above and have now corrected this to 2 parts, which is the required amount. it might be worth adding here that this is quite a dark olive drab; to allow for scaling you might want to add a small amount of white or light grey, and i suspect that a little use would result in a faded effect quite quickly. SCC15 is not the same colour as that used by the British Army in the fifties and sixties as far as I am aware, but Starmer stops at 1945.  :)

 

Regards,

 

Alastair M

Edited by A Murphy
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Thanks again.

 

SCC15 is definitely not the same colour as used later, but what I'm trying to get to is the wartime and immediate post-war livery.

 

The next step will be to find the nearest modern RAL equivalent, because the people painting the locos only recognise RAL, and there is a man standing by with colour swatches, waiting to go out into his garden in good daylight, to make that choice.

 

So, the end result will be a "close approximation to a reasonable assumption", but at least that is better than "spray them army green", which was where we were a week ago.

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SCC 15 was centrally formulated (to complement US Army standard olive drab) and issued from stores rather than mixed by units themselves. The first paragraph of ACI 533, 12th April 1944 does say "Olive drab will be adopted as the basic camouflage colour for all army equipments, in lieu of Standard Camouflage Colour No.2 (brown), and certain new equipments painted Olive Drab will be shortly received by units."

 

 If you have evidence that this was the colour used on WD railway stock post April '44, I think you can be pretty certain of the colour.

 

Regards,

 

Alastair M

Edited by A Murphy
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In answer to Doilum's question, haven't a clue. However, given that any US manufactured equipment was going to be shipped across the Atlantic to a war zone, my guess would be it was painted. It might be interesting to know if US forces railway stock was painted olive drab? If it was, all stock was probably in US olive drab, SCC 15 being formulated to complement the US colour, and avoid the need to repaint US equipment. Most of this is speculation on my part.

 

Regards,

 

Alastair M.

Edited by A Murphy
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The painting diagrams I have are North British drawings and there are occurrences recorded where different works were using different size numbers, so the manufacturers were painting the locomotives.

 

The USATC wagons shipped across the Atlantic in kit form were painted in U S Army olive drab. The USATC locomotives were painted grey, which could be light colour or nearly black in appearance.

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A very patient person who has access to all of the relevant IRS county handbooks might be able to fully answer the question of when each was re-numbered in complete detail, but I agree with Tony: the process spread over ages.

 

There was also, I think, one war baby  (HE3302/1945) that was actually ordered by a colliery company, rather than WD.

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"Continent Coalfield &Conservation" has a table of 90 locomotives that were given a new three digit army number to replace the 75xxx WD numbers. A further thirteen new builds were given two digit numbers. A significant number of these have survived.

HE 3302 doesn't appear in the above book as it wasn't a WD order.

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Steamport

 

only the very first batch of 0-6–0ST were khaki when new, the rest were “green” when new, and my quest is to discover “which green” when new, with choice narrowing down to SCC15 Olive Drab, or one of the family of Bronze Greens.

 

Khaki wasn’t only a “front line” colour, BTW, it got slapped onto all sorts of things while there was a shortage of green pigment.

 

K

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2 hours ago, Tony Cane said:

Some retained their WD numbers for 20 years, even though no longer WD owned. Others were at least renumbered during the war.

For example 71524 became No34 in December 1944.

RSH 7170/44 still carried its WD number 71516 on its tanks at Graig Merthyr colliery in 1978.

Ray.

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Guest Jack Benson

Donated by a local who acquired it from Capt. Hart of 820th Ordnance Company it is a S100 in use at Lockerley depot near the Salisbury-Romsey line. The depot had over 13miles of track, all removed and returned to 'nature' the depot was primarily ordnance storage for the European campaign. Other local weapon storage was RNAD Dean Hill, once the WE177 storage facility for Portsmouth based units and  it was on the opposite side of the mainline tracks to Lockerley.

 

JB

 

 

image.jpeg.916ece3be5292453262d17bf946e74f8.jpeg

 

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