Steam cabside number size

[millerhillboy]

Needing to renumber a couple of N gauge steam locos running in mid-1960s guise.

 

Fox, my preferred supplier for decals, doesn't do ready made numbers or anything close for the numbers I'm needing so I've got to buy individual digit sheets and form the numbers myself. Fair enough, can probably deal with that.

 

However the Fox website is offering me single digit sheets for 2mm in

 

8", 9" and 10" in either Cream or White(straw).

 

I believe that certain works occasionally used larger numbers, was it Cowlairs that would use larger digits but typically what is the correct size and colour to be using.

 

Out of interest the classes are a 4MT 2-6-0 and a B1, both as I say in early mid 1960s guise.

 

I didn't think it would be this complex!!!

 

Thanks to anyone who can clarify.

[Tim Lewis]

I believe that Cowlairs usually (or possibly always) used 12" numbers.

 

I don't know for sure, but I think most works used either 8" or 10". Not sure about cream/white, but I think that black locos used white? Maybe have a look in the relevant Yeadon's for the B1?

 

You'd be better off with a more definitive answer

[millerhillboy]

Thanks for your reply Tim, I've just found the following from here

 

Yahoo 7mm forum post

 

Perhaps more usefully, Talbot says [in his review of BR standard locos] that

<< Most works used 8in. high numerals for cab-side numbers but there were some

variations. Swindon used 9in. and Darlington and Cowlairs 10 in., while

Doncaster appears to have used 8in

 

No word on the colour, I'm sure I've heard 'straw' discussed before in this context but what would be the difference between straw and cream. Couldn't be much really.

[pH]

St. Rollox was well known for using larger than standard cabside numbers on ex-LMS engines. I don't know if Cowlairs did the same thing on ex-LNER ones. I had a look through the relevant volume of Yeadon's (as Tim Lewis suggested above) and also the RCTS 'green book' on LNER 4-6-0s (this is a good excuse to look at them again ). There is quite detailed discussion in both books about different letter size in 'BRITISH RAILWAYS' on tenders, different sizes and designs of BR totems, different fonts in cabside and smokebox numbers and even a variation in lining peculiar to Cowlairs. It was only a pretty quick scan, but I didn't see anything about different sizes of cabside numbers, or of the actual colour used for them - sorry.

[Guest Max Stafford]

Both the big Glasgow works used 10" numbers in the 1960s as did Inverurie. Cowlairs, as an ex-LNER works did it pretty much from the outset in BR days and I believe the practice was adopted by St Rollox during the 1950s. There's no doubt the style looks so much better than the 8" numbers favoured by Crewe and Derby.

 

Dave.