Do we know what the other "runner up" livery choices that BR considered when they picked the 'Corporate Blue' livery from 1968 and on?

[finelines]

Brian Haresnape was my life drawing teacher at art school and he told me that there was no choice but blue. Although it was a new hard wearing formulation, and how wrong that turned out to be, there was another instruction passed down from on high. When the railways were nationalised the management of the regions carried on in their own sweet way so a decision was made that the new livery must not have any links to the big four. I’m sure I would have said Blue A4s, but I don’t remember!

 

Roger

[roythebus1]

It may have been that the AM10s and AL6 were in gloss rail blue, it certainly looked different to the later Rail blue of the trains I ised to drive in the 1970s and 80. Maybe it was because they used an eggshell finish or the paint didn't weather well.

[Mike_Walker]

14 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Like being Minister of Transport and having investments in trucking companies?

 

oh wait…

Wasn't it a road construction company?

[Derekl]

32 minutes ago, Mike_Walker said:

Wasn't it a road construction company?

If you are thinking of Ernest Marples, it was Marples Ringway, responsible for much road and motorway building in the period. He was said to have sold his shares, but it was rumoured that he sold them to his wife! (Possibly not true). He seems to have been a character. After his stint in government, he fled to France owing a small fortune in unpaid tax

[melmoth]

16 minutes ago, Derekl said:

If you are thinking of Ernest Marples, it was Marples Ringway, responsible for much road and motorway building in the period. He was said to have sold his shares, but it was rumoured that he sold them to his wife! (Possibly not true). He seems to have been a character. After his stint in government, he fled to France owing a small fortune in unpaid tax

 

1. Marples Ridgway

2. Yes, he sold his shares to his wife

3. He fled to Monaco in 1975, not that long after having been raised to the Peerage by Edward Heath.

 

[BernardTPM]

12 hours ago, kevinlms said:

I suspect a fleet painted like D5517, would prove impossible to even attempt to keep clean.

The ochre colour, as used on D1015, was chosen in part because brake dust contamination didn't show much on it. Having said that, there was no lower off-white line on D1015 to obscure.

[melmerby]

19 hours ago, MartinRS said:

Good ???????

 

Nothing wrong with Dr Beeching.

He only did what he was instructed to by his boss, the aforementioned crook Marples.

In fact some of his ideas were needed for a more modern railway, carrying on as usual was not an option.

[OnTheBranchline]

9 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Nothing wrong with Dr Beeching.

He only did what he was instructed to by his boss, the aforementioned crook Marples.

In fact some of his ideas were needed for a more modern railway, carrying on as usual was not an option.

Didn’t the Wilson government in general push the idea of car ownership for the masses? 

[Mike_Walker]

The Marples affair was superbly alluded to by the Goons in "The Last Tram (from Clapham)".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jlsh 

[melmerby]

9 minutes ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Didn’t the Wilson government in general push the idea of car ownership for the masses? 

Marples was a Tory transport minister under "SuperMac" (Harold McMillan) and Alex Douglas-Home

 

Wilson's Labour was the succesor Government

Edited April 4, 2023 by melmerby

[OnTheBranchline]

7 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Marples was a Tory transport minister under "SuperMac" (Harold McMillan) and Alex Douglas-Home

 

Wilson's Labour was the succesor Government

My mistake.

 

I meant to say ‘wasn’t the government at the time pushing the idea of cars for everyone?’

[hmrspaul]

11 minutes ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Didn’t the Wilson government in general push the idea of car ownership for the masses? 

Barbara Castle, the Labour minister, was responsible for most of the implementation of the Beeching Report. A very complex political period as the ideas of public transport being subsidised by taxation also developed, but more so for buses as they served (and serve) far more people. Some ideas, such as having metropolitan integrated transport developed by the end of the 1960s - I remember it in my student days on Merseyside when even local BR ticketing was part of the bus/ferry public transport system. 

 

Bulk freight was an important idea developed under Beeching - MGR is usually mentioned but Freightliner, aggregates, cement all joined the fuel oil bulk movements. And although the loss of individual wagon load traffic was put down to Beechings ideas look at just how much is moved by the container train network these days. Change had to happen, but change hurts and change takes time. 

 

Paul

[rodent279]

On 04/04/2023 at 16:27, melmerby said:

Nothing wrong with Dr Beeching.

He only did what he was instructed to by his boss, the aforementioned crook Marples.

In fact some of his ideas were needed for a more modern railway, carrying on as usual was not an option.

Agree. Without wishing to turn this into another "Beeching-Hero or Villain" debate, he does get the blame for far too much of the bad stuff that went on, and nowhere near enough credit for the good stuff he initiated.

[Derekstuart]

On 04/04/2023 at 11:43, Derekl said:

If you are thinking of Ernest Marples, it was Marples Ringway, responsible for much road and motorway building in the period. He was said to have sold his shares, but it was rumoured that he sold them to his wife! (Possibly not true). He seems to have been a character. After his stint in government, he fled to France owing a small fortune in unpaid tax

It was not only a road building company, but the largest in UK and one of the World's largest outside of USA, also having contracts in the former Empire.

It is very trued that he sold his shares to his wife; this is public record.

 

An interesting point is that in the late 90s I was working for a company that managed aspects of civil engineering and it appears that some of the bridges in North London- Hendon and Brent Cross- when they had to dig into them to repair it seems that some railway ballast and old rail had mysteriously found its way in as a sort of pseudo ferro-concrete. I can speculate how, but not prove it. I could also speculate that he charged BR to dispose of what became free building material.

As for him fleeing yes, he left in the middle of the night for Monaco, only returning when he was dying and needed the NHS.

Edited April 7, 2023 by AY Mod

[VIA185]

It wasn't a case of someone coming up with some choices and a bunch of unqualified (in design) senior managers making a choice. The BR Design Panel was commissioned to come up with a new livery and did so. I knew Brian Haresnape through work at Ian Allan and he was annoyed that various works and individuals corrupted the purity of the Corporate Image. He was particularly critical of the Southern Region's reworking of the Pullman livery with an incorrect font and inverted colour scheme. (CJL)

[Morello Cherry]

I strongly recommend the Haresnape books on railway design. While a bit of their age, volume two which includes the BR period makes for fascinating reading. He looks at not only colour schemes but signage, carriage design, building design and talks a lot about the development of the Design Panel.

 

His argument is that i) the railways had to modernise and present a modern face to customs in the face of road and air competition, ii) facilities particularly stations had grown up with little thought, they were run down after interwar austerity, war time damage and postwar austerity and so needed to be renovated quickly and cheaply.

 

This is what underpinned the ideas of a uniform design that would be the same in Oban as in Chingford. A casual passenger would not be 'what does this mean?' or 'where are the toilets?' (or where are the signs to the toilets), where is the reading light. Standardising things such as carriage markings - Yellow stripe above the window = first class, red indicates buffet/restaurant, blue = second class.  Nice and easy and whether you are getting on a train at Portsmouth, St Pancras or Pwllheli, the coding is the same.

 

He is, imo a brilliant writer, who really helps explain the logic and intent behind the design work.

[bécasse]

The yellow (1st class) and red (catering) stripes didn't originate with the Design Panel but with the UIC, whose mandatory recommendations on the matter BR had previously chosen to ignore.

[The Johnster]

The yellow first class stripes and red catering stripes were introduced before the adoption of the corporate identity livery, and applied to lined maroon and SR malachite green stock.  I can't recall them being used on any of the various versions of green liveried dmu stock, or WR chocolate/cream stock, though I am happy to be corrected on this point.  As becasse says, they originated with UIC practice.

 

One of my colleauges at Canton back in the 70s was a card-carrying Communist party member, and was able to use a 'priv' free pass, one annually, over any UIC 'territory'.  He went to the limit of this on holiday one year, the pass being valid as far as the watershed of the Ural Mountains!  We digress...

 

 

 

 

[Morello Cherry]

Apologies for any confusion - my point was not that the choice of colour scheme for first, second and buffet was developed by the design board but rather as an illustrative example of the simplification by standardisation and visual that underpinned the thinking of the design board. My point being that for Haresnape and the Design Board it wasn't just about getting a load paint from ICI and painting everything blue but they were thinking about how the passenger negotiated the whole journey from entering the station at the start of the journey to the end. 'Are the signs clear? are the waiting areas inviting? is information clearly visible and not lost in advertising? Can the passenger interpret things quickly and easily?'

 

I'd suggest that it is a good example of holistic thinking from BR, something which has been historically lacking on British railways both before and subsequently, and perhaps, but for the oil crisis and the economic downturn of the 1970s which led to BR becoming very rundown, the modern image would have been more successful in achieving its goals. (In the end good design can only go so far)

Edited April 9, 2023 by Morello Cherry

[VIA185]

9 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

I strongly recommend the Haresnape books on railway design. While a bit of their age, volume two which includes the BR period makes for fascinating reading. He looks at not only colour schemes but signage, carriage design, building design and talks a lot about the development of the Design Panel.

 

His argument is that i) the railways had to modernise and present a modern face to customs in the face of road and air competition, ii) facilities particularly stations had grown up with little thought, they were run down after interwar austerity, war time damage and postwar austerity and so needed to be renovated quickly and cheaply.

 

This is what underpinned the ideas of a uniform design that would be the same in Oban as in Chingford. A casual passenger would not be 'what does this mean?' or 'where are the toilets?' (or where are the signs to the toilets), where is the reading light. Standardising things such as carriage markings - Yellow stripe above the window = first class, red indicates buffet/restaurant, blue = second class.  Nice and easy and whether you are getting on a train at Portsmouth, St Pancras or Pwllheli, the coding is the same.

 

He is, imo a brilliant writer, who really helps explain the logic and intent behind the design work.

Brian was a fascinating guy to work with. He did a lot of freelance work for various publishers. He was a fan of the LBSCR and pledged to get Stroudley's 'improved engine green' on as many locos as he could. He succeeded with a Brush Type 2 and with D1015 Western Champion. I 'ghost-wrote' a feature for him for the part-work 'World of Trains' and he paid me with a £50 note. It remains to this day the only £50 note I've ever had. He showed me the Intercity (black and grey) livery for the HSTs before he took it to the BR Board. He was an accomplished jazz pianist, too. Sadly, while walking back to his digs after playing the bars in Spain he was murdered by an unknown assailant. (CJL)

[asmay2002]

11 hours ago, bécasse said:

The yellow (1st class) and red (catering) stripes didn't originate with the Design Panel but with the UIC, whose mandatory recommendations on the matter BR had previously chosen to ignore.

The Yellow Stripe for first class (and blue for 2nd) had been used by the Great Eastern railway for its Jazz suburban services as far back as 1920 so predated the UIC.

 

[rogerzilla]

E S Cox had retired by the time Rail Blue came in, but he does describe how potential BR express liveries were trialled in a line-up of class 5s in black, apple green, GWR green and malachite, at Addison Road.  Red was never considered because it was recognised that it would appear to be yet another example of the LMS takeover.  Preferences were inconclusive for express passenger locos but eventually GWR green, or something like it, won.  Cox wasn't a fan of GWR green without the traditional brass and copper trims, and thought it looked even worse on diesels.

 

The "Marylebone mafia" had always wanted black for freight and secondary passenger locos, and Riddles managed to get LNWR-style lining included.

 

Anyway, just imagine a class 5 in apple green or malachite! 😆

[kevinlms]

On 10/04/2023 at 06:53, asmay2002 said:

The Yellow Stripe for first class (and blue for 2nd) had been used by the Great Eastern railway for its Jazz suburban services as far back as 1920 so predated the UIC.

 

Did BR ever use blue for 2nd class?

[Halvarras]

On 09/04/2023 at 16:54, The Johnster said:

The yellow first class stripes and red catering stripes were introduced before the adoption of the corporate identity livery, and applied to lined maroon and SR malachite green stock.  I can't recall them being used on any of the various versions of green liveried dmu stock, or WR chocolate/cream stock, though I am happy to be corrected on this point.  

 

The Parkin book on BR Mark 1 stock has a colour photo of choc/cream CK and FK vehicles end-to-end with yellow stripes, but comments that it was an unusual combination as by the time the stripes were coming in the choc/cream livery was already on its way out (BSK W34885 still extant in summer 1968 didn't get the memo!)

Yellow stripe on green DMU stock does seem to have been unusual to rare but examples did exist post-1966 - a quick scan of my DMU books found such treatment applied to Classes 100, 108 and Derby Lightweight vehicles. In 1969 I regularly saw Class 120 W51576/59582/51590, a late survivor in green (a couple of other sets had already progressed from green through plain blue to blue/grey by then), but now wish I could recall whether it had acquired yellow first class stripes by such a late date.....not something the young me would have paid much attention to 🥴!

[stewartingram]

8 hours ago, rogerzilla said:

Anyway, just imagine a class 5 in apple green or malachite! 😆

How about this?