Japanese railway liveries pre-1941

[Royal42]

I am looking for information on what the liveries were for Japanese rolling stock in the period before 1941.  I've tried Googling but all I seem to find is stories about the war, which is not what I am looking for.

 

If there is any information here or online, especially the colours of coaches etc; presuming that the locomotives themselves were black, then I would be grateful to receive any details.

 

Thanks

Mike

[Fenway Park]

The coaches were normally painted brown some with a coloured band below the window. Blue for first class and red for second.

 

Kato have just released a set of their 17m coaches to celebrate their 50th Anniversary and you can see this set on Hobby Search www.1999.co.jp/eng/10367028

 

20m coaches were introduced prior to WW2 and there have been models available in the past from Modemo with clerestory roofs in sets in pre WW2 liveries and markings.

 

Hope this helps.

[dullsteamer]

G'day Mike,

 

JGR colours in the years from nationalisation up to 1941 are easy to describe, as they were fairly basic.

 

Steam locos were normally painted plain black. Some engines had the edges of the footplate painted white, but this wasn't common, and seems to be mainly applied to the more glamorous passenger engines of the period, typically the 4-6-2s of classes C51, C53 and C54. Loco numberplates had raised lettering and edges in polished brass, with black backgrounds. The plates fitted to the smokebox doors were of the larger format featuring the class designation under the individual engine number.

 

 

 

During the thirties the style of numbers were changed from the serif style on the 2120 class plate to the block style on the C12 plate.

 

(Sorry about the poor quality of the images, I don't have a working scanner at the moment.)

 

Electric locos, multiple units and loco-hauled carriages were painted a drab dark brown colour known as "Grape No.1". Carriage and EMU roofs had a light grey finish that quickly weathered to a sooty black/grey, underframes and bogies were black. Lettering was white, and the coloured bands designating class were blue and red. Although my recollection was that blue denoted second class, and red third.

 

https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ぶどう色1号

 

Both GreenMax and Gunze Sangyo have paint that matches Grape No.1, but I don't know whether they're available outside Japan.

 

Freight/goods rollingstock was generally overall black with white lettering. The exception to this were the Re-type refrigerator cars which had white bodies with black lettering, on black underframes. Kumu-type vans had white stripes on the body - these were to indicate they were special purpose cars fitted to carry motor vehicles. Freight rollingstock also carried markings in the form of kanji that indicated which railway administrative area or region they were allocated to.

 

If you have any other questions about the railways of Japan I can probably help, they're my main modelling interest.

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

[asmay2002]

https://dreamofacity.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/8-imperial-carriages-of-empress-shoken-1902-and-emperor-meiji-1910-in-shimbashi-factory-of-japan-railway-bureau-tokyo-1889.jpg

[dullsteamer]

Mike,

 

In the Tamiya range of spraypaint cans, TS-69 Linoleum Deck Brown is a reasonably close match to weathered or faded Grape No.1

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.