LNER Sentinel & Clayton Railcars - livery & other questions

[Chas Levin]

Very interesting and as you say, makes sense regarding visibility in photos: glad it's not just my eyesight or powers of observation!

 

I'd agree it seems reasonable to assume similar Sentinel design.

 

Yes, 0.15mm is very fine! I'm finding 0.25mm is fairly achievable with some consistency, but the surface you're lining onto needs to be extremely flat to preserve a consistent line and I've learned that the hard way!

 

Do you know if that painting diagram is available to obtain from the NRM as a copy? I tried to look for some documents on their site a while back but the system didn't seem to be working...

[t-b-g]

1 hour ago, Chas Levin said:

Very interesting and as you say, makes sense regarding visibility in photos: glad it's not just my eyesight or powers of observation!

 

I'd agree it seems reasonable to assume similar Sentinel design.

 

Yes, 0.15mm is very fine! I'm finding 0.25mm is fairly achievable with some consistency, but the surface you're lining onto needs to be extremely flat to preserve a consistent line and I've learned that the hard way!

 

Do you know if that painting diagram is available to obtain from the NRM as a copy? I tried to look for some documents on their site a while back but the system didn't seem to be working...

 

I will be seeing the friend who has the drawing at the weekend, so I will ask him where he found it.

[MikeTrice]

As readers will be aware there is a colour picture of the Sentinel railcar "Eagle" in "The Big Four In Colour 1935-50". This image is from the Steam and Sail (now part of Colour Rail) ref NE 68. This should answer all our questions right?

 

Maybe not. Here is a part of one of the transparencies enlarged using a digital microscope in an attempt to identify lining colours:

 

Although the lines appear to be greenish I would consider the results to be inconclusive which is a shame.

 

Searching through google images for sentinel railcars it appears that the Leeds Model Co produced a LNER Sentinel during the 1930s. Surely they would have referred to the real thing when producing the model? Image of one can be found on the Model Railway Club's site: https://www.themodelrailwayclub.org/shop/models/o-gauge-7mm-scale/7mm-scale-locos/leeds-o-gauge-lner-sentinel-cammell-steam-railcar-b255-rtp/ The Leeds model seems to feature red lining and they have reproduced the two different thickness of lining (albeit the wrong way round) and correctly feature the horizontal line along the waist. However if the prototype featured red lining I would have expected some red to be evident in the slide enlargement. Perhaps the red was manufacturer's license.

 

[MikeTrice]

On 28/06/2022 at 23:13, t-b-g said:

 

I will be seeing the friend who has the drawing at the weekend, so I will ask him where he found it.

There is an official drawing in the NRM drawings archive: 9552N Arrangement Of Writing For Open 3rd Brakes To Drwg 9360N (Excursion Stock)   1933

 

Excerpt below:

[t-b-g]

4 minutes ago, MikeTrice said:

There is an official drawing in the NRM drawings archive: 9552N Arrangement Of Writing For Open 3rd Brakes To Drwg 9360N (Excursion Stock)   1933

 

Excerpt below:

 

Many thanks. Although it has a different drawing number, it looks very like the one my friend has.

Edited June 30, 2022 by t-b-g

[MikeTrice]

1 hour ago, t-b-g said:

 

Many thanks. Although it has a different drawing number, it looks very like the one my friend has.

There are probably a series covering the different vehicles.

[Chas Levin]

1 hour ago, MikeTrice said:

As readers will be aware there is a colour picture of the Sentinel railcar "Eagle" in "The Big Four In Colour 1935-50". This image is from the Steam and Sail (now part of Colour Rail) ref NE 68. This should answer all our questions right?

 

Maybe not. Here is a part of one of the transparencies enlarged using a digital microscope in an attempt to identify lining colours:

 

Although the lines appear to be greenish I would consider the results to be inconclusive which is a shame.

 

Searching through google images for sentinel railcars it appears that the Leeds Model Co produced a LNER Sentinel during the 1930s. Surely they would have referred to the real thing when producing the model? Image of one can be found on the Model Railway Club's site: https://www.themodelrailwayclub.org/shop/models/o-gauge-7mm-scale/7mm-scale-locos/leeds-o-gauge-lner-sentinel-cammell-steam-railcar-b255-rtp/ The Leeds model seems to feature red lining and they have reproduced the two different thickness of lining (albeit the wrong way round) and correctly feature the horizontal line along the waist. However if the prototype featured red lining I would have expected some red to be evident in the slide enlargement. Perhaps the red was manufacturer's license.

 

Two steps forward, one step back... I'd agree with your assessment that it's inconclusive as to the colour of that inner line and that is a shame.

 

Also, that enlargement does seem to confirm that the outer panel lining (of the double-lined pattern) was black, but that black line looks thicker and darker than the horizontal line going round the boundary of the lower green section!

 

That made me take another look at the Flickr photo of Cleveland you linked to a few posts ago Mike (https://www.flickr.com/photos/wandering_grayson/27692306705/sizes/k/) and actually, the horizontal line between the cream and green sections looks less dark than black there too, something I'd not noticed before. Is it possible that that horizontal line was in fact green and not black, notwithstanding both the preserved NER car's black and the black shown on the Tourist stock diagram you just posted?

 

There was clearly some variation in livery between different cars, because looking again at the first photo you originally posted on my build thread and which I included at the start of this thread - the cropped detail of Trafalgar 273, that looks to me as if it does not have a horizontal black line separating the green and cream at all.

 

 

The Leeds Model Co vehicle is a lovely period piece - I love it! But it is an odd one in terms of livery, isn't? On the one hand, it's contemporary with the prototype and might therefore have been done from life, on the other hand those red lines must surely be either artistic license or an error. Perhaps the artist was familiar with the earlier red and cream livery and failed to notice the change? (I'm saying that on the assumption that when they changed from red/cream to green/cream for the main colours, they also changed the non-black lining from red to green).

[MikeTrice]

I note that Yeadon mentions the Claytons have an early livery featuring black and gold panel lines. I wonder if this continued after relivery in green/cream.

[Chas Levin]

5 hours ago, MikeTrice said:

I note that Yeadon mentions the Claytons have an early livery featuring black and gold panel lines. I wonder if this continued after relivery in green/cream.

Perfectly possible, but I can't help wondering (and please excuse my repeating myself) whether there might simply have been variations between different paint-shops and therefore we may be on a wild goose chase in trying to establish a definite design?

 

I recently spent some time studying photos of GNR liveried C2 4-4-2 tank locos whilst trying to establish as accurately as possible the dimensions of the lining layout. I compared a number of pretty straight side-on views of different locos, all re-sized and printed at the same scale and discovered that the layout of the livery wasn't quite as standardised as might be expected. The colours stayed the same, but the sizes of the lined out panels and their distances from the corners and edges of the bunker and side-tank sides varied quite significantly. I also turned up quite a bit of anecdotal evidence about colour variation, in pursuit of accuracy there too: might we not be looking at something similar here?

 

Still, part of the object of the exercise is to establish some precedent to follow for modelling purposes, and we have made some headway there...

Edited June 30, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

By way of (related) diversion from the main livery questions, I thought I'd add scans of a couple of articles on these vehicles from the April and May 1938 editions of the LNER Magazine (now comfortably out of copyright and in the public domain). These appear to be parts two and three of a longer series - the April one says 'Continued from last month' and the May one says 'to be continued' - so if anyone has the magazines from March and June 1938, please could they add the missing parts? I'm afraid there's almost nothing about livery (just a tantalising comment that the exterior of the vehicles is finished in "the colour scheme for LNER steam rail cars" 🙄😅) but there's a lot of other interesting detail:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's a picture of the front covers too, just for interest:

 

Edited June 30, 2022 by Chas Levin

[RichardT]

1 hour ago, Chas Levin said:

so if anyone has the magazines from March and June 1938,

In case anyone wasn’t aware, the GERS offer for sale a full scanned set of the LNER Magazine on DVD (and lots of other good stuff on other CDs/DVDs/downloads) here:

https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/files-emporium-home/c-23-cd-our-dvds-and-cds

 

Available to members and non-members of the GERS alike (except some CDs of the members’ magazines) - GERS members get a discount however.

 

(I’m not a GERS member, just a satisfied customer.)

 

Richard T

 

 

[Chas Levin]

42 minutes ago, RichardT said:

In case anyone wasn’t aware, the GERS offer for sale a full scanned set of the LNER Magazine on DVD (and lots of other good stuff on other CDs/DVDs/downloads) here:

https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/files-emporium-home/c-23-cd-our-dvds-and-cds

 

Available to members and non-members of the GERS alike (except some CDs of the members’ magazines) - GERS members get a discount however.

 

(I’m not a GERS member, just a satisfied customer.)

 

Richard T

 

 

Ah - thank you Richard, I think you'll have guessed that I wasn't aware of that... but I'm very pleased to learn of it and I shall order a copy straight away! 📀

[jwealleans]

On 28/06/2022 at 12:38, Chas Levin said:

There's also a nice looking photo of a model towards the foot of the LNER Info's page on Sentinels (https://www.lner.info/locos/Railcar/sentinel.php ) which shows a model in brown and cream (or perhaps brown and beige). Not sure which livery that's meant to be

 

I don't thin k that has been answered.  That is the CLC livery for their one and only (IIRC) railcar.  I think the model was by Morgan Gilbert.

 

Edit - it tells you all this at the bottom of the article as well.

Edited July 4, 2022 by jwealleans

[Chas Levin]

3 hours ago, jwealleans said:

 

I don't thin k that has been answered.  That is the CLC livery for their one and only (IIRC) railcar.  I think the model was by Morgan Gilbert.

 

Edit - it tells you all this at the bottom of the article as well.

Ahhhh - thanks Jonathan. I looked again and you're quite right, it does say that at the foot of the page, but between the picture and that information is the whole section - including a long table - about the railcars' names and numbers and it didn't occur to me to scroll right down: I shall look more carefully in future...

Glad to find out though: one of the photos I bought from the Transport Library is of CLC Railcar 602, but it's in pretty grimy condition and not having studied it in detail prior to starting my build, I didn't spot the two-tone livery. Taking another look now, in light of your post, I realise the upper half is lighter in tone and must presumably be this livery.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Having bought the excellent Great Eastern Railway Society DVD set of the complete LNER Magazine, I also asked the GERS if they would mind my posting the other parts of the Sentinel-Cammell article series on here and they said that was fine, but would I please also include a note about their Files Emporium, the section on the GERS website where you can purchase all sorts of documents, magazines, photos and drawings: https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/files-emporium-home . THey explained that this isn;t with a view to generating income for profit's sake, but in order to help finance the scanning of further material so that it too can be made available to researchers, students and modellers - an admirable aim!

 

Emporium is certainly the right word - there's an amazing quantity and variety of material available here, divied into easily navigated pages - there are a lot of scale drawings and diagrams of rolling stock of course, also the GER magazine (which preceded the LNER one, maps, plans, railway company meeting minutes, a huge amount of related hostorical documentation and of course a large number of fascinating photos. Somethings can be bought as hard copy, others download only but everything's available to both GERS members and non-members (the difference being a membership discount) so if you haven't had a look there already, it's well worth a browse.

 

Here, then are parts 1, 4, 5 and 6 of the Sentinel articles from the LNER Magazine of 1938. I realise of course that there's virtually nothing to do with livery (that's why I changed the title of this thread when I uploaded parts 2 and 3) but there is much of interest to anyone researching the vahicles more broadly than just questions of colour so I hope these will prove interesting too:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chas Levin]

On 28/06/2022 at 11:18, MarkC said:

Original railcar, believed to be "Hope", at Robin Hoods Bay on trials. Shows a lot of lining details.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/r/robin_hoods_bay/robin_hoods_bay(4.1927)old3.jpg

 

Fascinating topic, this, particularly as I've bought a Shapeways Clayton railcar body, to complete in due course. (Superb 3D print, by the way).

 

Mark

 

 

Mark, in starting to read through the LNER Magazine, I came across this full page article (with kind thanks to the GERS) which includes the photo you linked, along with another from the same occasion, though it's still not very clear to me whether - as discussed earlier on the thread - the 'teak' paintwork was fully grained or just teak coloured:

 

 

There's also a much smaller image on another page of the same magazine number, part of a series they ran called "Readers' Snapshots", but again, detail isn't too obvious, even when enlarged, other than confirmation that the 'cars were definitely fully lined out:

 

 

Edited July 8, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Going back to the livery, here's a view of Tally-Ho from March 1928 - the resolution's not high enough to discern line colours but it shows something of the layout of the side panels:

 

[MarkC]

1 hour ago, Chas Levin said:

Mark, in starting to read through the LNER Magazine, I came across this full page article (with kind thanks to the GERS) which includes the photo you linked, along with another from the same occasion, though it's still not very clear to me whether - as discussed earlier on the thread - the 'teak' paintwork was fully grained or just teak coloured:

 

 

There's also a much smaller image on another page of the same magazine number, part of a series they ran called "Readers' Snapshots", but again, detail isn't too obvious, even when enlarged, other than confirmation that the 'cars were definitely fully lined out:

 

 

Hi Chas

 

Some great images there - thanks for posting them.

 

I have to say, I'm minded more towards teak colour, rather than scumbled effect. It would be nice to know for certain, of course.

[Chas Levin]

I always find it very odd that teak - which looks quite light in hue in some photos - appears so very dark in others (I'm talking about B&W here); that makes it much harder to tell what was done here of course, because any graining is rendered pretty much invisible and if it was applied as painted effect, they'll have done a very careful, subtle job as can be seen on steel coaches done that way later...

[micklner]

Total guess.

 

Brand new vehicles, Teak Grained scumbled paint.

 

Teak in photos can appear very dark as it ages it turn almost Black. The LNER before revarnishing on old stock bleached the wood with Oxalic Acid to lighten the wood again.

 

See here

 

https://www.steve-banks.org/prototype-and-traffic/133-teak-coaches

 

"Teak" paint was used on old vehicles e.g pre grouping stock, simply cheaper than stripping the wood etc .

Edited July 8, 2022 by micklner

[Chas Levin]

34 minutes ago, micklner said:

Total guess.

 

Brand new vehicles, Teak Grained scumbled paint.

Yep, that's what I think too, especially in view of the date - 1920s - when high man-hour finishes like that wre still perfectly normal and when maintaining the highest standards in decorative terms was still a very high priority...

36 minutes ago, micklner said:

Teak in photos can appear very dark as it ages it turn almost Black. The LNER before revarnishing on old stock bleached the wood with Oxalic Acid to lighten the wood again.

 

See here

 

https://www.steve-banks.org/prototype-and-traffic/133-teak-coaches

I can understand when it's old teak (and I knew about the oxalic acid procedure) but what I find odd is that teak coaches being photographed for the first time, freshly outshopped before ever having run a mile, often look so dark - the Nigel Harris books contain countless examples of this. I assume it must be to do with the way the B&W photographic film stock of the time dealt with this type of wood, under that many coats of size and varnish, in bright daylight with the surface sitting vertically: I wonder if, had they pushed a carriage over on its side (dreadul thought I know, but just in theory!) the panels would have looked a great deal lighter, lying horizontally in the sunshine...?

[MarkC]

Were the Sentinels painted at their own works, though, or LNER workshops? That might be something to consider.

[Chas Levin]

18 hours ago, MarkC said:

Were the Sentinels painted at their own works, though, or LNER workshops? That might be something to consider.

Interesting question Mark: I don't know. I'd assume that companies with their own livery would look after their own painting - that vehicles (or locos) built elsewhere would be delivered unpainted (or in that photographic grey that was often used for newly outshopped items) and the receiving company (in this case LNER) would then apply their livery, so that they'd know it was done exactly as required.

I'd certainly think this since I learnt of the existence of painting diagrams and saw how carefully railway companies specified these things... but on the other hand, perhaps part of the point of producing such carefully drawn diagrams was so that they could be sent out to third party paint shops, along with cans of pre-mixed paint?

Or, like so many procedures that we'd like to find out were precisely formulated and rigidly adhered to, perhaps it varied from company to company, decaded to decade and with the type of rolling stock...

 

Does anyone know about this sort of thing - were vehicles or locos built by outside contractors delivered to the Big Four (or indeed to Pre-grouping companies) for them to apply the livery, or did the outside contractors paint as well as build?

 

Also, while applying paint is a fairly standard procedure, in the case of the earliest railcars in lined out teak, given the LNER's very precisely laid down and quite long-winded teak preparation and varnishing regime, I should be surprised if they trusted that to other people.

 

I'll have a look through a few books...

[H16LSWR]

Re Chas Levins post. The order details issued by Sentinel for LNER Locomotives gives the painting details as 'finish painted in standard L.N.E.R. colours viz:- black with red line' and photographic evidence seems to confirm they were indeed finished thus at Shrewsbury before despatch.

The railcars were different as Sentinel merely supplied the power unit section to Cammell Laird at Nottingham (later Metropolitan-Cammell at Birmingham) where the actual build took place. The power units are recorded as despatched finished 'standard for power units' which from photographs looks like the usual one (or two) coats of grey primer. It is my opinion (and no more than that) that the complete railcars were delivered to the LNER in primer and finish painted by the latter. As witness see W. Yeadon's LNER Register, part twelve, pages 15 and 46, particularly the latter which shows railcar 2281 in primer at Gorton en-route to York for finish painting.

[Chas Levin]

1 hour ago, H16LSWR said:

Re Chas Levins post. The order details issued by Sentinel for LNER Locomotives gives the painting details as 'finish painted in standard L.N.E.R. colours viz:- black with red line' and photographic evidence seems to confirm they were indeed finished thus at Shrewsbury before despatch.

The railcars were different as Sentinel merely supplied the power unit section to Cammell Laird at Nottingham (later Metropolitan-Cammell at Birmingham) where the actual build took place. The power units are recorded as despatched finished 'standard for power units' which from photographs looks like the usual one (or two) coats of grey primer. It is my opinion (and no more than that) that the complete railcars were delivered to the LNER in primer and finish painted by the latter. As witness see W. Yeadon's LNER Register, part twelve, pages 15 and 46, particularly the latter which shows railcar 2281 in primer at Gorton en-route to York for finish painting.

Very interesting thank you for posting!

 

As you read in my post, that was what I thought about the railcars too - that final livery would be applied by the receiving railway company's own shops.

 

Regarding the LNER Locos you mention, would those be the Sentinel 0-4-0 shunters? If so, ws it the case that they were constructed in their entirety at the Sentinel works? If so, and they were not only being painted black but also lined in red, the LNER must have been happy to trust the simpler livery to Sentinel, also perhaps because the shunters were almost like departmental locos, not 'customer facing', as the modern jargon would have it.

 

I've thought for a while that I should get the relevant volume of Yeadon for future builds and my curiosity to see the photo of 2281 in primer is such that I've just ordered a copy - I'm sure there'll be a great deal more interesting info too, of course.