1956 Regional Coach Liveries - Why no LNER variant ?

[Stentor]

In 1956 British Railways introduced an all-over darker maroon for passenger coaching stock which resembled the pre-nationalisation LMS livery. Similarly from 1956 on the Southern Region locomotive-hauled stock was generally painted 'coaching stock' green and on the Western Region some express passenger coaches were painted in traditional GWR-style chocolate and cream. 
 

So why didn’t the former LNER join in and paint some of their stock in a version of teak, silver or garter blue ?

 

Apologies if I’m going over well trodden ground but I was thinking about it and realised that I’d not seen any photos or references to it.

 

//Simon 

 

 

[Wheatley]

The former LNER was still split into ER and NER in 1956. Maybe they'd got more forward-thinking things to do than embark on a regional vanity project (or two). 

 

I must admit I thought the devolution of coaching stock livery to the regions was an odd thing, especially when the two regions involved showed a spectacular lack of imagination and just regressed 10 years instead of thinking up something new. 

 

I'd love to know too though, it's not something I'd ever thought of before. 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Wheatley

[Steamport Southport]

Don't forget it was a prelude to Privatisation which was Conservative policy at the time. 

 

It was the financial insecurity after the Suez Crisis that put a stop to it.

 

 

 

Jason

[Cwmtwrch]

46 minutes ago, Stentor said:

So why didn’t the former LNER join in and paint some of their stock in a version of teak, silver or garter blue ?

Grey and garter blue had not been seen for over a decade by 1956, and neither was particularly hard wearing or easy to keep clean, apparently; neither was a standard LNER colour, having been limited to the streamliners. Most LNER passengers would never have travelled on such a train, or even seen one, possibly. Painting steel panels in full imitation teak was possible, technically, as the LNER had done it post-WW2, but it was slow and complex to do, entirely dependent on the skill of individual craftsmen, and consequently expensive.

[Dunsignalling]

57 minutes ago, Wheatley said:

The former LNER was still split into ER and NER in 1956. Maybe they'd got more forward-thinking things to do than embark on a regional vanity project (or two). 

 

I must admit I thought the devolution of coaching stock livery to the regions was an odd thing, especially when the two regions involved showed a spectacular lack of imagination and just regressed 10 years instead of thinking up something new. 

 

I'd love to know too though, it's not something I'd ever thought of before. 

The Southern going green may have been simply an attempt at unifying the appearance of electrified and non- electrified services/routes.

 

The WR's motivation was perhaps less clear. Chocolate and Cream was limited to new-build or freshly overhauled Mk.1 stock, initially used in the most important (named) expresses, before being cascaded to lesser services when the next batch arrived.

 

Interestingly, they didn't stick with it for all that long before adopting the "standard" maroon, and even going to the lengths of painting most of their newest locos to match.

 

The Eastern did break ranks in one respect, though, in painting certain new EMUs in maroon.

 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[Curlew]

The North Eastern Railway used crimson for carriages, so was effectively returning to their pregrouping colour. 

[Wickham Green too]

3 hours ago, Cwmtwrch said:

... Painting steel panels in full imitation teak was possible, technically, as the LNER had done it post-WW2, ...

... as did the GNR (I) ........ and the Eastern Region DID consider resurrecting this finish on Mk1s before - belatedly - adopting maroon ( Parkin pp54/55 ).

 

( Of course if the current - so called - LNER wished to ditch their grey& red and revert to teak they could just print it on 'sticky-back-plastic ! )

[pete_mcfarlane]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

The Southern going green may have been simply an attempt at unifying the appearance of electrified and non- electrified services/routes.

It's also a single colour (OK, two if you count the black ends) and needs no lining. So slightly cheaper. 

 

And one Mk1 coach did (eventually) get the imitation teak finish - http://www.cs.rhrp.org.uk/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=1218. I always thought it looked a bit odd. 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

I thought the green and cream LNER tourist stock livery rather suited Mk1s:

Not applied till the 1980s, though. Photographer Kevin Lane.

Edited December 16, 2023 by Jeremy Cumberland

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

The Southern going green may have been simply an attempt at unifying the appearance of electrified and non- electrified services/routes.

 

Claret, or whatever you want to call it, was from the earliest days the natural colour of British first class carriages, whereas seconds were green. So this choice of colour simply reflects the standard of passenger comfort, service, etc. experienced on the SR compared to other regions.

[Nearholmer]

Or, the fact that some Southern loco-hauled coaches were never painted ‘blood and custard’, they went straight from green to green.

 

Looked at as colours from customer perception and maintenance perspectives, I honestly think (no bias here!) that green was far better than the maroon colour. I occasionally see rakes of maroon coaches used on specials/excursions nowadays, and it is a dreadfully dull colour, especially in winter light, and looks grubby, whereas green seems to stand up better under a wide variety of lighting conditions. Green doesn’t need a second, creamy, shade to ‘lift’ it, whereas reds and browns do.

[Michael Hodgson]

6 hours ago, Wheatley said:

The former LNER was still split into ER and NER in 1956. Maybe they'd got more forward-thinking things to do than embark on a regional vanity project (or two).

 

Forward thinking would be very much the LNER's regional vanity idea.

 

 

[The Johnster]

6 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Don't forget it was a prelude to Privatisation which was Conservative policy at the time. 

 

It was the financial insecurity after the Suez Crisis that put a stop to it.

 

 

 

Jason

 

I had not realised this, and it puts much of the railway history of the mid-50s in a different light.  The regional autonomy that the 1956 livery changes were a symptom of came about. I'd thought, after the 1955 management reshuffle, which amongst other things ousted Riddles and the entire loco policy in favour of modernisation, resulting in the mass adoption of  diesel power when it became apparent that the Treasury weren't going to stump up the moola reliably enough, old ground and well trodden.

 

The Suez debacle was costly to the nation both in monetary terms and that of our international reputation, the last gasp of Empire and the realisation that we were not a superpower.  This indubitably impacted on railway capital projects as it did on most sectors of society and industry.  But I was not fully aware that the government of the day intended to privatise the railway, a scenario in which the regions would presumably have been 'sectorised'.  But the regional carve up of the country's railway was not completely aligned to the Big Four's fields of operations, and it is not easy to see how a privatised Scottish, or North Eastern, Region would operate as privatised concern; the Scottish, operationally, was still the LMS and the LNER to all intent and purposes. 

 

Unless they were planning to restore the Big Four.

 

So far as liveries were concerned, the LMR and ex-LMS parts of the Scottish and North Eastern Regions effectively had their coach livery restored by the standard lined maroon, as did the Southern by their wholesale reversion to malachite green.  The LMR painted some of it's Pacifics in a BR version of the LMS livery, but nobody else reverted to thier pre-nationalisation loco liveries.  The WR was effectively using the GWR lined passenger livery anyway, as similar restoration to the LMR's coaches. 

 

There were some GW-designed coaches that recieved the BR choc/cream; slip coaches ad Hawksworth-rebuilt Collett Restaurant Cars.  1956 was some time before the WR got any BR mk1 catering stock. 

 

Does all this, I wonder, have any bearing on the absolute unstandardised mess that the 1955 and other pre-1966 diesel locomotive livery descended into, concurrent with some time being taken to settle on a dmu livery.  There were at least eight* concurrent diesel locomotive liveries by the early 60s, not counting one-off Desert Sand, Golden Ochre, D5578 Blue &c, with some classes appearing in more than one livery at a time.  A mess.

 

 

 

*1)Dark green pale stripe at cantrail, e.g. Class 40, 44/5/6

2) Dark green pale stripe lower body side e.g. Class 21/2//4/8

3) Two-tone green Type 1, e.g. Class 14/5/6/17/20

4) Two-tone green 'Sulzer', e.g. Class 25, 47

5) Two-tone green 'Deltic', Class 55, 35, 29

6) Two-tone green Baby Deltic, no white window surrounds

7) Plain green Class 37, some 52, shunting engines

8) Plain maroon, some 52 and some Warships.

[Michael Hodgson]

4 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Unless they were planning to restore the Big Four.

 

 

I don't know about earlier Tory administrations, but that's what John Major was said to have favoured, until the theorists talked him into separating infrastructure and rolling stock into different companies and having the operating companies competing on licence contracts rather than permanently fixed routes.  All very much to do with traditional party dogma - competition good, monopoly bad.

[pH]

7 hours ago, Wheatley said:

The former LNER was still split into ER and NER in 1956.

And parts of it were in the Scottish Region, too! 
 

The ScR would have been a problem if the idea of “regional” liveries had been extended. While all of the other regions had a major inheritance from one of the Big 4, with relatively small parts from others, the ScR was split down the middle ex-LMS/ex-LNER. Which colourscheme to choose? And never mind pre-Nationalisation  animosities, even then there were still pre-Grouping ones.

[Nearholmer]

Back up-thread, Steamport Southport asserts that railway privatisation was Conservative policy in 1956, but was it?

 

If it was, I can’t find any contemporary evidence for the fact. What I can find is lots of contemporary evidence to the contrary.

 

Starting with the Conservative 1955 manifesto, which is rather a quaint document by modern standards. It eventually, after dealing with a lot of what were obviously far higher priorities, gets to railways, and says (you have to read this as if Sir Anthony Eden is saying it):
 

“We shall make it possible for the British Transport Commission to push on with its comprehensive plan of modernisation and re-equipment, so that the railways may earn their own living and a good wage for those who work on them. The public and industry are entitled to a better service.”

 

Next, the Minister of Transport introducing the railway finance bill which was the concrete expression of that manifesto position, in 1956. This is the full thing, and it is actually worth wading through: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1956-12-03/debates/761732cb-b6b1-4a11-aadb-26b02991fd73/Transport(RailwayFinances)Bill , but in summary, he endorses the BTC as the best body to take the industry forward, using devolved regional boards, and he says very clearly that what he is attempting to do is turn “a nationalised industry into a national utility”; if he was laying a path to privatisation he was very quiet indeed about it, and it was going to be a very long path. My impression is that at most he might have been attempting to create a position where that option might, much later, once the railways were making a profit, come onto the table. 
 

As an aside, he says that seeing chocolate and cream carriages on the WR doesn’t bother him (i.e. that he doesn’t see it as symbolic of balkanisation) and is probably a good thing if it cheers the staff up a bit.

 

I think what might have been going on at the time was that some Conservative MPs and/or “thinkers” were advocating de-nationalisation, because they were fed-up with strikes and effective subsidies, the latter affecting their ability to cut taxes, saw the railways as a millstone around their necks, and nationalisation as such a socialist evil that they couldn’t stomach it. But that doesn’t seem to have been the adopted party policy or government position.

 

If anyone can provide evidence to the contrary, that the government or party had adopted a policy of denationalisation of the railways (they had of road transport) in 1955/56, I’d be interested to see it.

 

PS: I can’t find anything about denationalisation of the railways in the 1959 or 1964 manifestos either. 1959 says that the Modernisation Plan is a jolly good thing and going splendidly, and 1964 says that the Beeching Plan is a jolly good thing and going splendidly, while the emphasis on road schemes increases between the two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Dunsignalling]

7 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

I had not realised this, and it puts much of the railway history of the mid-50s in a different light.  The regional autonomy that the 1956 livery changes were a symptom of came about. I'd thought, after the 1955 management reshuffle, which amongst other things ousted Riddles and the entire loco policy in favour of modernisation, resulting in the mass adoption of  diesel power when it became apparent that the Treasury weren't going to stump up the moola reliably enough, old ground and well trodden.

 

The Suez debacle was costly to the nation both in monetary terms and that of our international reputation, the last gasp of Empire and the realisation that we were not a superpower.  This indubitably impacted on railway capital projects as it did on most sectors of society and industry.  But I was not fully aware that the government of the day intended to privatise the railway, a scenario in which the regions would presumably have been 'sectorised'.  But the regional carve up of the country's railway was not completely aligned to the Big Four's fields of operations, and it is not easy to see how a privatised Scottish, or North Eastern, Region would operate as privatised concern; the Scottish, operationally, was still the LMS and the LNER to all intent and purposes. 

 

Unless they were planning to restore the Big Four.

 

So far as liveries were concerned, the LMR and ex-LMS parts of the Scottish and North Eastern Regions effectively had their coach livery restored by the standard lined maroon, as did the Southern by their wholesale reversion to malachite green.  The LMR painted some of it's Pacifics in a BR version of the LMS livery, but nobody else reverted to thier pre-nationalisation loco liveries.  The WR was effectively using the GWR lined passenger livery anyway, as similar restoration to the LMR's coaches. 

 

There were some GW-designed coaches that recieved the BR choc/cream; slip coaches ad Hawksworth-rebuilt Collett Restaurant Cars.  1956 was some time before the WR got any BR mk1 catering stock. 

 

Does all this, I wonder, have any bearing on the absolute unstandardised mess that the 1955 and other pre-1966 diesel locomotive livery descended into, concurrent with some time being taken to settle on a dmu livery.  There were at least eight* concurrent diesel locomotive liveries by the early 60s, not counting one-off Desert Sand, Golden Ochre, D5578 Blue &c, with some classes appearing in more than one livery at a time.  A mess.

 

 

 

*1)Dark green pale stripe at cantrail, e.g. Class 40, 44/5/6

2) Dark green pale stripe lower body side e.g. Class 21/2//4/8

3) Two-tone green Type 1, e.g. Class 14/5/6/17/20

4) Two-tone green 'Sulzer', e.g. Class 25, 47

5) Two-tone green 'Deltic', Class 55, 35, 29

6) Two-tone green Baby Deltic, no white window surrounds

7) Plain green Class 37, some 52, shunting engines

8) Plain maroon, some 52 and some Warships.

 

Also green with white waist-line stripe and white window surrounds, The BRCW Classes 26, 27 and 33.

 

The great majority of the Westerns were maroon; the "others" amounted to fewer than ten locos.

 

IIRC, Warships, though, only started to appear in maroon as late as 1965, not all that long before Rail blue began to be applied.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[The Johnster]

Pre-maroon/blue Warships were another variation I left out; dark green white stripe at waist level.  With the lined D29xx, we are now up to eleven loco liveries.  

[Mol_PMB]

25 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Pre-maroon/blue Warships were another variation I left out; dark green white stripe at waist level.  With the lined D29xx, we are now up to eleven loco liveries.  

I fear this may head a little off-topic, but surely the diesel livery was green, with pale-coloured accents to suit the aesthetics of each class? I don't think that really counts as eleven different liveries.

There were very few loco classes which had more than one variant of the green livery: some Class 24s were repainted in the Class 25/3 scheme but there can't have been many others.

I will concede that there were four(?) different colours used for the accents, but they were all on a scale between white and light green.

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

8 hours ago, pH said:

And parts of it were in the Scottish Region, too! 
 

The ScR would have been a problem if the idea of “regional” liveries had been extended. While all of the other regions had a major inheritance from one of the Big 4, with relatively small parts from others, the ScR was split down the middle ex-LMS/ex-LNER. Which colourscheme to choose? And never mind pre-Nationalisation  animosities, even then there were still pre-Grouping ones.

 

No problem.  All they would have done was respray their stock with tartan paint.

[Dunalastair]

15 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

No problem.  All they would have done was respray their stock with tartan paint.

 

An excuse to remember the 'Royal Crampton'?

 

https://steamindex.com/people/crampton.htm

[Bucoops]

It's easy to understand why they didn't to an Eastern version - they saw the quality that varnished teak had, and realised that they couldn't do that as then nobody would want to travel on the other regions 😉

 

By grouping, the GE was using crimson as well mind.

[Wheatley]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

... probably a good thing if it cheers the staff up a bit.

Now that I can see the point of, it was the same reason breakdown trains were painted red once the modern 75ton cranes arrived. 

[Wickham Green too]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Claret, or whatever you want to call it, was from the earliest days the natural colour of British first class carriages, whereas seconds were green. ...

Hmmmm - must be going colour blind !

 

Steamport : 19/4/80

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

Hmmmm - must be going colour blind !

 

Well, OK, not the very earliest days, but claret was widespread by the late 1840s.