Hornby SR Maunsell carriages - body/roof colours?

[spikey]

Am I correct in assuming that if a Hornby Maunsell carriage in Southern Railway livery has a grey roof, the body colour is malachite, and if the roof is white it's olive? 

[Robin Brasher]

I am finding HMRS Livery Registry no 3 LSWR and Southern difficult to follow on this topic. 

Electric sets had grey roofs. It looks like the other coaches had white roofs up to the early 1930s and grey in the later 1930s.  I think coach roofs were grey during the 2nd World War so they were more difficult targets for the bombers. 

 

It looks like olive coaches had white roofs but not all coaches with grey roofs were malachite.

[JohnR]

Also they wouldn't have stayed white for long! 

[spikey]

Cheers Robin.  I'll go with white roof = olive body colour.  The question's arisen because of bad descriptions and poor colour rendition on some of the websites I'm looking at.

[phil-b259]

20 minutes ago, Robin Brasher said:

 

It looks like olive coaches had white roofs but not all coaches with grey roofs were malachite.

 

The change was mainly due to WW2 - light coloured / shinny (the LMS used a bright silver colour) roofs being rather conspicuous from the air

 

The GWR had white roofs for their stock built in the 1930s as did  the LNER I  believe.

 

Thing is on a hot summers day or when parked up under strong sunshine painting the roofs white would assist in keeping the interiors cool. We rather forget that although heating coaches was easy by virtue of steam heating, keeping them cool was rather harder.

 

And yes, the white paint did turn to a light grey relatively quickly due to the effects of smoke and atmospheric pollution that light grey would still be effective in reflecting some of the sunlight and lowering temperatures than something painted dark grey to start with.

[Oldddudders]

The OP didn't ask what Southern Railway painted anything. He asked about the colours Hornby has chosen for its coaches. If in doubt read the question. 

 

Olive Hornby Maunsells have a light-coloured roof, but it is by no means white. A very light grey, maybe. The Malachite coaches have a somewhat darker grey. 

[Steamport Southport]

They also did some unlined Olive coaches with darker roofs.

 

This is one of them and there was also the Return From Dunkirk train pack.

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/430928/hornby_r4816a_maunsell_restaurant_kitchen_and_dining_car_7865_in_sr_olive_green/stockdetail.aspx

 

 

 

Jason

[spikey]

2 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

They also did some unlined Olive coaches with darker roofs.

 

This is one of them and there was also the Return From Dunkirk train pack.

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/430928/hornby_r4816a_maunsell_restaurant_kitchen_and_dining_car_7865_in_sr_olive_green/stockdetail.aspx

 

Anybody know what else Hornby did/does that's olive body and darker roof?

[Steamport Southport]

They did another Restaurant Car and two Open Thirds to go with them (but can't find the R number for them).

 

https://www.bourtonmodelrailway.co.uk/p/Hornby-r4816-sr-maunsell-kitchendining-first-7869-era-3

 

The Return To Dunkirk pack. OOS at Hattons, but look around the smaller shops as I've seen them around. I don't think you'll get the heavy discount that I did at the time though. ISTR they went down to about £150.

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/98091/hornby_r3302_1940_return_from_dunkirk_75th_anniversary_train_pack_with_700_class_0_6_0_325_i/stockdetail.aspx

 

I'm unsure whether they did any others. Quite possible though.

 

 

Jason

[Oldddudders]

Kernow split the Dunkirk pack, so the coaches were available on their own. I don't know if they have any left. 

[GreenGiraffe22]

19 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

They did another Restaurant Car and two Open Thirds to go with them 

 

https://www.bourtonmodelrailway.co.uk/p/Hornby-r4816-sr-maunsell-kitchendining-first-7869-era-3

 

 

 

The open thirds Hornby did were lined with white roofs though.

 

The Return from Dunkirk set is a really useful 3 set if you can find one, and the 700 that comes with it is one of the best performing locos I've ever owned. Most Hornby Southern Maunsells seem to belong to sets of 8 or 9 when I was researching them which is a little impractical for the branch line commuter layouts 

[Steamport Southport]

38 minutes ago, GreenGiraffe22 said:

 

The open thirds Hornby did were lined with white roofs though.

 

The Return from Dunkirk set is a really useful 3 set if you can find one, and the 700 that comes with it is one of the best performing locos I've ever owned. Most Hornby Southern Maunsells seem to belong to sets of 8 or 9 when I was researching them which is a little impractical for the branch line commuter layouts 

 

Not all of them. They did some to match the Restaurant Cars. They appeared at the same time.

 

You need to re-check your sources as most of the sets Hornby have done have been three or four car sets. Certainly the ones which have appeared over the last five years or so, some of the earlier numbering was a bit random. Possibly because it's difficult to find confirmed liveries of full sets.

 

 Not complete, but most of the sets are here.

 

https://sremg.org.uk/coach/sets.html

 

 

Jason

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, GreenGiraffe22 said:

Most Hornby Southern Maunsells seem to belong to sets of 8 or 9 when I was researching them which is a little impractical for the branch line commuter layouts 

But even in the olive era, electrification caused some changes to sets. For example, one of the Hornby sets you refer to would be 470, which when commissioned in 1927 was an 8-set, probably supplemented by a pullman, working the key Eastbourne business service. By 1933, when the Puls and Pans came on stream, 470 was reduced to a three-set, 4050, 5656, 4051. 

 

243 was a 4-set from new in 1933 - 3778, 1224, 7412, 3779. All available from Hornby if you can find them. 

 

Then there is set 392 - 3218, 5141, 3219 commissioned in 1926 for Waterloo - WoE services, and thus ripe for use on any WoE branch line. 

[phil-b259]

On 04/05/2021 at 04:12, Steamport Southport said:

They also did some unlined Olive coaches with darker roofs.

 

This is one of them and there was also the Return From Dunkirk train pack.

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/430928/hornby_r4816a_maunsell_restaurant_kitchen_and_dining_car_7865_in_sr_olive_green/stockdetail.aspx

 

 

 

Jason

 

They did - but as the name implies this pack was based around the condition of vehicles at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation.

 

Getting rid of brightly painted things which could easily be seen from the air was done well before that - the behaviour of the Luftwaffe at Guernica and other places in the Spanish civil war meaning that painting roofs drab colours was a priority regardless of whether it was needed or not for maintenance purposes.

[GreenGiraffe22]

3 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Not all of them. They did some to match the Restaurant Cars. They appeared at the same time.

 

You need to re-check your sources as most of the sets Hornby have done have been three or four car sets. Certainly the ones which have appeared over the last five years or so, some of the earlier numbering was a bit random. Possibly because it's difficult to find confirmed liveries of full sets.

 

 Not complete, but most of the sets are here.

 

https://sremg.org.uk/coach/sets.html

 

 

Jason

 

I was using a spreadsheet from https://sremg.org.uk/home-mob.shtml to cross reference carriage numbers against sets but apparently I stand corrected.

 

As for open thirds, the promo computer generated photos were unlined but the product delivered was very much lined. At least the one I bought was...

 

https://uk.Hornby.com/products/sr-maunsell-open-third-1375-era-3-r4833

 

I stand to be corrected of course if anyone managed to obtain a later unlined one with a grey roof