Station colours after nationalisation

[darren chpamn]

Hi 

This may sound a stupid question  did the station building  signal boxes and other station equipment get repainted after nationalisation or did it stay the same colours  ,if it did change when did that happen? Hope that makes sense 

Darren

 

[ikcdab]

Well yes they did get repainted but over years as the routine repainting came up.

[The Fatadder]

Some branches lasted a long time in GWR colours.  Malcolm Mitchell shared some photos of Yelverton station in the mid 50s on his Facebook page. Showing the station still with everything in heavily weathers light / dark stone.

[Steamport Southport]

A good guide is this. 

 

https://www.stationcolours.com/gwr

 

I definitely remember some stations still in chocolate and cream in the 1970s. Not preserved, but BR. Likewise ex LMS ones still painted maroon and cream. Some of them looked immaculate whilst others looked as if they hadn't seen new paint for years. 

 

 

 

Jason

[bécasse]

12 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

A good guide is this. 

 

https://www.stationcolours.com/gwr

 

I definitely remember some stations still in chocolate and cream in the 1970s. Not preserved, but BR. Likewise ex LMS ones still painted maroon and cream. Some of them looked immaculate whilst others looked as if they hadn't seen new paint for years. 

 

 

 

Jason

Chocolate and cream was a BR(WR) colour scheme applied for most repaints between c1949 and c1965 to any station that was located within the Western Region at the time of the repaint (so not just to ex-GWR stations). The GWR didn't paint their stations chocolate and cream, although there were colours in the paint palette that the GWR used that weren't too far from chocolate and cream, especially when heavily weathered. It is usually obvious, even in black and white photos, whether a station bore GWR or WR period paint.

[Steamport Southport]

19 minutes ago, bécasse said:

Chocolate and cream was a BR(WR) colour scheme applied for most repaints between c1949 and c1965 to any station that was located within the Western Region at the time of the repaint (so not just to ex-GWR stations). The GWR didn't paint their stations chocolate and cream, although there were colours in the paint palette that the GWR used that weren't too far from chocolate and cream, especially when heavily weathered. It is usually obvious, even in black and white photos, whether a station bore GWR or WR period paint.

 

The question was whether they were repainted though. So them being chocolate and cream suggests they were.

 

Many of the ones I remember would have officially been in LMR territory as many of them were transferred in the mid 1960s. North/Mid Wales and Midlands mainly.

 

I would also think that some had been repainted since 1965 as this was the late 1970s up to about 1990. Some of them were fresh rather than neglected. I think when BR was being split up was when they all changed as they started to get corporate colours and signs such as Regional Railways and the short lived Network North West. Then they were changed again when the TOCs appeared.

 

 

Jason

[JimC]

I recall seeing a station on a closed line in light and dark stone in the 1970s.

 

[mike morley]

Related question; How long did it take for the shades of chocolate and cream and what was painted which to become standardised after Nationlisation?

I know buildings ended up where what used to be dark stone became what was undeniably chocolate and what used to be light stone very definitely cream, but I've also seen pictures of buildings that where almost everything was very nearly white except doors that were so dark they were almost black.  The Forest of Dean was one area where this style seemed to be particularly widespread, but I know I've seen photographs of other areas that used a similar approach.

[bécasse]

There was a great furore in the letters pages of the Railway Modeller c.1962 about the number of models of "typical' GWR branch line termini where the buildings had been painted in chocolate and cream by the modeller. There seemed to be considerable disbelief of the facts among such modellers until someone, no doubt aided by Cyril's wicked humour, kindly pointed out that many then surviving buildings at real ex-GWR termini were still painted in GWR colours (light and dark stone, etc.) albeit somewhat weathered by time. Many such places closed within a couple of years or so, and despite the apochryphal stories of repaints being carried out with the closure notices up, most never received the BR(W) chocolate and cream paint scheme.

[Crichel Down]

I did a bit of research into this some years ago.  As everyone knows (I hope), the GWR painted their buildings mainly in two shades of 'stone' (actually two shades of a salmon pink / buff colour).  Photographic evidence shows that some stations were not repainted for many years after Nationalisation,  especially on branch lines, and a few were not repainted at all before being closed.  Photographic evidence also shows that different stations on the same line could be 'missed out'.  So, for instance, Fairford never got a repaint, whereas Witney did.

 

Chocolate and cream, as has been pointed out, was a BR(WR) colour scheme, which was later replaced [in the 1960s] with an 'all cream' colour scheme, but examples of GWR colours nevertheless persisted in some places, as outlined above. 

[darren chpamn]

thanks for everyone help on this question

[NCB]

One thing has always puzzled me. I have a copy of Model Railway News, from the late 50s, which has a letter from Roye England, no less, asking if anybody has memories of the colours GWR stations were painted in the 1930s. At the time there seemed to be an assumption amongst modellers that the GWR used chocolate and cream. As far as I recall (I haven't the copy to hand) England said that on examining some faded paintwork he was wondering if it was something else. The puzzling bit is that as one renowned for observation he couldn't with confidence remember.

 

Nigel

[4069]

10 hours ago, NCB said:

One thing has always puzzled me. I have a copy of Model Railway News, from the late 50s, which has a letter from Roye England, no less, asking if anybody has memories of the colours GWR stations were painted in the 1930s. At the time there seemed to be an assumption amongst modellers that the GWR used chocolate and cream. As far as I recall (I haven't the copy to hand) England said that on examining some faded paintwork he was wondering if it was something else. The puzzling bit is that as one renowned for observation he couldn't with confidence remember.

 

Nigel

That prompted me to look up Roye's memoirs ("In Search of a Dream"), and in 1958 he records a visit to south Devon, and finding Yelverton station "still in Great Western colouring that I thought I should never see again".  He goes on "Although there were stations in Devon still in the 'light and dark stone' of the GWR, this tended usually to be somewhat faded and I was anxious to get a colour photograph of a really fresh, 'live' example. To my joy, I found it on a tiny single building at Marytavy". The picture he took then was subsequently used as a colour reference for Pendon, which has models of Yelverton and Ivybridge station buildings.

 

Stuart J

[The Fatadder]

Hopefully this link will work 

https://m.facebook.com/429787867073126/photos/a.429794447072468/2389756771076216/?type=3 
 

I don’t think you need a Facebook account to view, one of Malcolm Mitchell’s photos of Yelverton (if you go up to the gallery there are more)

[Jim31]

I am new to the hobby and am planning a layout based on GWR practice. The colour scheme for stations perplexes me slightly. I understand the later use of chocolate and cream in later days. However I am puzzled that many layouts I see in the magazines or on the net which are in the light and dark stone era seem to be painted in cream and dark stone. I have the Phoenix Precision paints whose light stone differs markedly from that used in the layouts, being much richer and darker. Am I missing something obvious? I'm not a rivet counter but I would like to get it approximately right. Any thoughts on this.

[Miss Prism]

31 minutes ago, Jim31 said:

I'm not a rivet counter but I would like to get it approximately right.

 

Welcome to the mad world of GWR structure colours.

 

Two brief points:

 

- Most structures were painted by subcontractors, who may or may not have had colour swatches to work with or from. They made up their pigments from local materials. Their priority was getting a good quality durable finish rather than obsessing about the right 'colour'.

 

- Colours on structures fade.

 

I am very conscious of the need for a revamp of the gwr.org structure colours page.

 

[Crichel Down]

By the inter-war period pre-mixed paints were being supplied to the GWR under contract by commercial paint suppliers.  They worked to colour samples supplied by the company, but pre-WW2 colour photos (e.g. in the Colourail collection) seem to confirm that one paint supplier's idea of what matched the GWR's standard tints may have differed from another's (!)

 

At the end of my researches, I came to the conclusion that one could never reach a definitive view as to the precise reproduction of the GWR structure colours.  The best that can be hoped for is a reasonable approximation of the colours that the GWR used.

 

Standard Tint No.1   "Stone"  [unofficially known as 'Light Stone'  -  a creamy buff]

Standard Tint No.2   "Stone"  [also referred to (confusingly) as 'Light Stone'  -  a yellowish buff, sometimes with a

                                                     slight  hint of pink]

Standard Tint No.3   "Stone"  [unofficially known as 'Dark Stone'  -  a salmon pink colour that could vary from a fairly

                                                     dark pink to a lighter salmon pink shade]

Standard Tint No.4   "Chocolate"* [the original colour of the confectionery, i.e. a reddish brown.]

[*This colour was called "Purple Brown" before WW1, but was almost certainly the same colour as post-WW1 “Chocolate”] 

 

Before WW1, ST No.4 was extensively used on station buildings, as an over-all colouring on both doors and window frames.  For a time after WW1, ST No.4 hardly seems to have been used at all; it came back to use to a limited extent in the 1930s, but was no longer applied in the same way as it had been used before WW1.  But in the pre-WW1 period signal boxes were usually painted in colours that more closely resembled the post-war colour scheme applied to station buildings.

 

In the inter-war period, a two-tone colour scheme was generally applied.  The top coat could be ST No.1 with ST No3,  or ST No.2  with ST No.3.  (Where the top coat was ST No.2, ST No.1 was used as an undercoat.  Where the top coat was ST No.3, either ST No.1 or ST No.2 could be used as an undercoat.)  In this period, the glazing bars of windows were painted white.

 

Here is a photo of a GWR station building and train shed I have modelled.  I have rendered the colours as weathered and faded versions of the Stone colours, but I can’t claim that these colours are ‘correct’ – they are my interpretation (an “artist’s impression”): 

Edited April 19, 2020 by Crichel Down
Slight tidying up and clarification

[martinT]

Now seems to be the time to remind RMWebbers of the Great Western Study Group's book: 'GWR Structure Colours 1912 - 1947 From Official Sources'.

 

 

It includes colour photos taken in the 1950s of structures still in GWR colours - admitedly general faded - from all round the system: eg Bloxham, Longville, Chudleigh, Bletchington, and others.

 

It is priced at £14.95 (£10.00 for members) + P&P. Further information & details of how to order can be found on the Publications page of the GWSG's website: http://www.gwsg.org.uk/

 

Martin

 

[Andy Kirkham]

On 18/04/2020 at 01:09, NCB said:

 At the time there seemed to be an assumption amongst modellers that the GWR used chocolate and cream.

 

Interesting that they seemed to have no memories of the railway as it was 10 years earlier. I guess it shows how young the average age of modellers was then.

[bécasse]

I noticed, without doing a systematic search, that ST no.4, when it started to be reused to a limited extent from, say, c1930, seemed to be applied to areas of woodwork that might have been more susceptible to rot than normal. That made me wonder whether it contained an extra preservative component, although I have seen no documentary evidence to suggest that it did.

[Hal Nail]

Related to this, Hanwell and Elthorne station in West London which has remained in light and dark stone, has just been refurbished. I was there when they were waving around some colour charts and thought about referring them to experts at Didcot or similar - I should have done as unfortunately it is now somewhere between pink and orange.

[Nearholmer]

Whether this adds anything to the sum of human wisdom, I don’t know, but it is a Bassett Lowke model made in the 1930s, so I’m pretty sure that it shows what people thought the colours looked like at the time.

 

It looks very similar to Crichel Down’s interpretation shown above to me.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Il Grifone]

I can remember Clifton Down station in Bristol being repainted in chocolate and cream for the Queen's visit in 1954. Unfortunately I can't remember what colours it was painted before - presumably two shades of crud.

 

IIRC the discussion concerning GWR colours was resolved with the comment that weathering meant that any colour from near white to salmon pink was possible. I no longer have the magazines to confirm. (Big clear out caused by downsizing    )

[NCB]

For what it's worth, I use the Railmatch versions of Stone 1 & 3. They are rather less pink than the Precision versions and to me sit better on models.

 

Nigel

[Crichel Down]

7 hours ago, NCB said:

For what it's worth, I use the Railmatch versions of Stone 1 & 3. They are rather less pink than the Precision versions and to me sit better on models.

 

Nigel

 

Me too.  I used ‘Railmatch’ 606 “GWR Light Stone” and 607 “GWR Dark Stone” as the best starting point from which to mix my own colours for my station building and train shed (shown above) and for other GWR buildings on the layout.  Both colours were let down with Matt White.

 

For “Light Stone”, I found it necessary to add a few drops of Signal Yellow to reproduce a satisfactory ‘buff’ colour which was not too yellow in hue, and which still retained a subtle hint of pink.

 

For “Dark Stone”, the Railmatch version, when seen against the “Light Stone” lacked the salmon pink tint I was seeking, so I added a few drops of Signal Red to reproduce the ‘pinkish’ tint I was looking for.

 

So I can recommend the Railmatch colours, but some slight modification may be required, as explained above, (depending upon individual taste).