Colour of GWR loco coal wagons

[NCB]

I've come across the colour of the iron-bodied loco coal wagons described both as wagon grey and as black. Any ideas as to which one is correct? I'm thinking mainly of the Felix Pole 20T wagons in the 1930s, but info as regards other wagons would be useful as well.

Thanks

Nigel

[Penrhos1920]

That old chestnut!!

 

Black does not get a mention in the latest GW Way regarding loco coal wagons.  But it is mentioned for water tanks.  So I think wagon grey it was for loco coal wagons.

[Mark Saunders]

Black and Dark Grey are very subjective as I took photo's of NEW (so new they had just let the paintshops) ASW scrap carriers in bright sun and they look grey but are black!

[NCB]

I'd had a look in GW Way but couldn't find any mention of loco coal wagons. Hence the question!

 

Nigel

[corneliuslundie]

I agree that GWW says nothing specific about the colour of loco coal wagons. However, there is over a page about lettering etc, pp134, 135 in the second edition. The wagons illustrated could easily be either grey or black.

I am sure there has been a previous thread on RMWeb on this topic.

Jonathan

[Penrhos1920]

22 hours ago, NCB said:

I'd had a look in GW Way but couldn't find any mention of loco coal wagons. Hence the question!

 

Nigel

 

Agreed.  But on the pages that follow the colour of water tanks, pilot vans and containers are mentioned at the beginning of each section.  The sections that cover gas reservoir tanks, permanent way wagons and loco coal wagons don’t mention any colour.  I interpret that to mean that the later wagons are grey.

 

I’m not sure that this photo helps even though it is in colour.

 

I don’t know what the copyright is.

[brossard]

I always thought that GWR Internal User (Departmental) wagons were black.  I believe Loco Coal wagons fall into that category.

 

John

[Il Grifone]

I thought the consensus was grey, but that Mr Russell, who must have actually seen the things, stated black. This could suggest a switch to black sometime in the thirties?

 

In the above photo they seem grey - the same grey as the wagons in the background. The locomotive also seems grey, but there is a tinge of green about her. As regards copyright, the presence of both large and small lettering in a fresh condition would suggest circa 1937, which would suggest the photographer has passed on, but that 70 years have passed since is unlikely.

 

IIRC there is another thread on this subject, which failed to come to a definite conclusion. My Coopercraft GW Loco Coal wagon is painted grey.

[NCB]

On 20/02/2020 at 21:59, brossard said:

I always thought that GWR Internal User (Departmental) wagons were black.  I believe Loco Coal wagons fall into that category.

 

John

 

You may be right. Certainly the Parkside kits assume grey for ordinary 20T coal wagons and black for GWR loco coal wagons.

[Darwinian]

I've made this observation before but here's the evidence to support it. Once painted and weathered it's hard to tell black from grey (at least on 4mm scale models). Obviously lighting also has an effect as does the exposure of the photographs.

Here are some examples photographed on similar days, in the same place using the same settings. The coal wagons are black (honest) and the merchandise wagons grey.

 

These are deliberately slightly over exposed to show underframe detail but the differences are still not great even to the naked eye. Lighting has a significant effect on the differences so I would say  it's hard to make any definite conclusions from photographs, especially ones from the period.

 

[Martyn T]

If you take the image into a photo editor and drop the brightness till you have good detail in the sky and clear lettering it suggests (to my eye) that they were originally black but faded somewhat.

[Il Grifone]

I tried that and corrected the bluish tint of the locomotive a bit (she must be dirty green), but the wagons still appear grey to me and identical in colour to the vans in the background. The one with the large 'G  W' appears slightly more weathered than the other, which is as would be expected.

 

All the roofs of these vans seem to be white too, which seems unusual. Perhaps, since the photo appears to be taken at Swindon, they are all freshly painted?

Edited February 22, 2020 by Il Grifone

[57xx]

Bearing in mind GWR freight grey was quite dark, those in Penrohs's pic still look grey to me too. Compare them to the known black of the smokebox and they are definitely a different,lighter, shade. Also there are many pics in Atkins et al that have similar contrasts that show them to be grey.

 

I think the confusion about departmental vehicles being black may have come from them being black in BR days and some mis-recalling of what was what colour when.

[Steamport Southport]

Look at a better copy of the photograph such as in Big Four In Colour. They look black....

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Four-Colour-1935-50/dp/0906899621

 

 

 

 

Jason

[57xx]

I have the book and they look even more like a dark grey than black in print.

There's no blue cast on the loco on the print original either, you can clearly see it is green.

Edited February 23, 2020 by 57xx

[NCB]

3 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Look at a better copy of the photograph such as in Big Four In Colour. They look black....

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Four-Colour-1935-50/dp/0906899621

 

 

 

 

Jason

That looks useful. Ordered it.

 

The colour of the real thing would depend on weather and other things. Take a snap on a day under grey clouds not long after a shower has past and black will look black. Take it on a dry sunny day and black never looks black.

 

I notice that a lot of kits like Parkside describe the loco coal wagons as black, but that may not be reliable.

 

Nigel

[NCB]

On 22/02/2020 at 12:42, Darwinian said:

I've made this observation before but here's the evidence to support it. Once painted and weathered it's hard to tell black from grey (at least on 4mm scale models). Obviously lighting also has an effect as does the exposure of the photographs.

Here are some examples photographed on similar days, in the same place using the same settings. The coal wagons are black (honest) and the merchandise wagons grey.

 

These are deliberately slightly over exposed to show underframe detail but the differences are still not great even to the naked eye. Lighting has a significant effect on the differences so I would say  it's hard to make any definite conclusions from photographs, especially ones from the period.

 

 

Interesting! Here's a snap of my Ynisarwed wagon:

This is "black", painted in Railmatch Weathered Black. However, take a look at:

The GWR wagons were painted in Precision GWR Freight Grey (sorry about the quality, these are pretty old pics). Looked at in the flesh, one can just about tell there's a difference, subtle, but it's there. With Railmatch GWR Freight Grey, which is a smidgen lighter, there's more of a difference.

 

Nigel

[Mark Saunders]

All the discussion is fine but what is really needed are  the works painting and lettering drawings. There must be some archived somewhere!

[Crichel Down]

This question is an old chestnut that comes up again at regular intervals.

 

I think the confusion arises from the fact that BR(WR) seem to have painted service vehicles, such as LOCO coal wagons, black (although I have seen later photos of ex-GW  loco coal wagons painted in the light grey BR  livery.)

 

I have come round to he view that, in GWR days, such wagons were painted in the same shade of freight stock grey as other GWR goods wagons.  However, before we get into a real stew over this, I once conducted an experiment, painting one wagon in GW freight stock grey and another in matt black, and then gave them both a reasonably heavy (but not excessive) weathering  -  mud from below and soot [a 50:50 mix of matt black and Dark Earth] from above.  After this, the actual colour of the two wagons was indistinguishable, and it was impossible to say which was painted grey and which was painted black.  After that, I stopped worrying about this problem!

[Denbridge]

An old GW railwaymen friend, sadly long deceased was always adamant loco coal wagons were black. He worked the loco coal trains in the 30's, so on the basis he was usually right in his recollection, I've plumped for black.

[NCB]

23 hours ago, Denbridge said:

An old GW railwaymen friend, sadly long deceased was always adamant loco coal wagons were black. He worked the loco coal trains in the 30's, so on the basis he was usually right in his recollection, I've plumped for black.

 

Think that's good enough for me. Black it is (well, Railmatch weathered black).

[GWR_Modeller]

Hi,

A previous thread on this subject mentioned that black paint might be bituminous to help protect the iron from the effect of corrosion from the coal.  If that is the case might wooden loco coal  wagons be grey while the iron wagons were black?

 

[NCB]

On 05/03/2020 at 22:46, GWR_Modeller said:

Hi,

A previous thread on this subject mentioned that black paint might be bituminous to help protect the iron from the effect of corrosion from the coal.  If that is the case might wooden loco coal  wagons be grey while the iron wagons were black?

 

 

That's a thought.

[Il Grifone]

Surely this would have affected the steel merchandise coal wagons as well? AFAIK these were always grey.

[GWR_Modeller]

Good thought, pretty much b*****s my suggestion doesn't it.