1956 Regional Coach Liveries - Why no LNER variant ?

[Curlew]

Pretty sure I read somewhere that the different styles of stripes etc. on green diesels was so that staff could more readily identify each class - not different liveries applied at random.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Curlew said:

different liveries applied at random.

 

My understanding is that there wasn't anything random about it but considerable artistic thought was given to what livery suited each design best. But I need reminding of the details.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Compound2632
grammar tidy

[Jeremy Cumberland]

3 hours ago, Dunalastair said:

 

An excuse to remember the 'Royal Crampton'?

 

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

 

Apparently there were moves to revive this colour scheme in the early post-nationalisation era, on the former Great Western of all places. I don't know the details, but my former boss had been an apprentice at Swindon Works in the 1950s, and he told me how he had once been sent to the stores for a tin of tartan paint.

[Wheatley]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

But I need reminding of the details.

The BR Design Panel. 

[Nearholmer]

Before the Design Panel as such, which wasn’t convened until 1956, there were smart people with ideas putting proposals forward, displays of trial liveries, extended trials in service etc. A great deal went of from 1948-50, with some pretty, and pretty awful combinations of colours.

 

if you look at the first ‘finalised’ express train livery, it used red, white, and blue, so the colours of the UK flag, but clever artistry moved each shade from flag-brilliance to something more subtle, and it worked, and looked very good indeed, but unfortunately none of the colours stayed good-looking for long.

 

 

Edited December 17, 2023 by Nearholmer

[asmay2002]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

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

There were both Maunsell and Bulleid coaches turned out in Crimson & cream including the infamous Tavern cars.

 

Edited December 17, 2023 by asmay2002

[Halvarras]

6 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

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.

 

I agree with this view. When you take a timeline look at it BR diesel liveries went through an evolution between the late 1950s and 1962/3. Until the end of 1960 the pale grey accents were in vogue, applied however the body design was judged to best take them. In 1961 the production Deltics and Hymeks appeared with yellow-green lower valances and off-white cab window surrounds (the Hymek's design was better suited to this but the Deltic got there first - I wonder what discussions were held within EE to come up with the rationale for this treatment, but these flagship locos would certainly have looked dull without it); no other loco designs received this livery scheme, probably because it just wouldn't work on them. Then came 1962's Brush Type 4, and a broad band of Sherwood Green found favour instead - so much so that Derby outshopped its revised Class 25 so adorned from late 1963 - but the first NBL Class 29 conversion, D6123, had acquired it a few months earlier. From 1965 more Class 29s (not all, the blue ones never received it), a handful of Class 24s and two Class 27s had confirmed approval. It was perhaps telling that DP2's 1965 repaint into 'Deltic livery' employed Sherwood Green, not the yellow-green applied to the Deltics. I believe this two-tone green livery would have become more widespread if the arrival of BR blue in 1966 hadn't curtailed it, and the Class 50s could indeed have all looked like D444 did for a while.

 

Swindon made a rather late decision to begin repainting the Warships into Western-matching maroon in September 1965, but by the time they outshopped D864 'Zambesi' in blue 14 months later they had overhauled and repainted 32 of them - nearly half of the class.

 

 

[adb968008]

Slight tangent but watching On Her Majesties Secret Service, they used a green hue on the black 5 with maroon mk 1’s that made the mk1’s look quite nice in green with the yellow/black lining around the side.

 

Wasnt one of LSLs BSKs painted like this for a while ?

[The Johnster]

I think the problem with the lines, narrow/boad high/low/middle, was that because of the varied positioning of grilles it was difficult to standardise the application.  47 and Deltic two-tone was more adaptable and, to my view, more attractive, even on the Baby Deltics which did not have white window surrounds.  On Hymeks with syp it was a thing of great beauty, the best looking livery on the best looking diesel of the period to my mind.  The 37s looked very plain in unrelieved green but were brightened up a bit by syps and the aluminium trim around the headcode panel on the centre-headcode locos.

 

What I don't think was possible was a continutation of the black/silver prototype diesel livery, as it would have been impossible to keep the silver underframes clean.  The EM1 and EM2 Manchester/Sheffield/Wath locos were interesting, steam liveries adapted to the boxy body shape, and to my mind they looked good in them, but again, the relief of the syps improved them.

 

The idea of different positions for the lines to assist staff in identifying classes is a new one to me, but I can see the thinking behind the idea.  On the WR, of course, we were used to all the engines looking the same, and our diesels were varied enough in shape and size to not need that sort of identitfication aid, but that all went out the window with the blue livery anyway.  But there was little visual difference between Class 42 and 43 Warships, or 45 and 46 Peaks, and little difference inside the cabs either, so to an extent it didn't matter to the locomen.

 

One night in 1972, I was booked to work the 01.55 Cardiff Long Dyke-Croes Newydd, 8M01, Hereford for relief home on the cushions, normlly a 47 turn and with a secondman.  Unusually, there was no 47 for us at Canton, and we were taken to Long Dyke in the shed minibus where a loco had been left attached to the train by Hereford men earlier.  On arrival at Long Dyke, the loco turned out to be a 40, and these were not signed at Canton.  But my loco crew climbed aboard and started her up anyway, and I carried on with preparing the train.  Checked the load books and we were ok for load and brake force for a 40-hauled class 8, and having prepped the van I presented the driver with the load slip, made out by Long Dyke for the usual 47 with annotations initialled for 40 by yours truly.

 

'What's all this, then'?  'Load slip for a D200'.  'What the (!) you on about, Prof (my railway nickname), this is a D68', which is what we called 37s at Canton in those days.  'No it's not, it's a D200, look, it's even got a water scoop to pick up water at Dillicar on the 'Royal Scot'; that got me a bit of a look!  'He's right', says the secondman, 'that's a water scoop wheel and the gauge next to the handbrake wheel, wonder if it works'!  Driver conceded that I was correct, but that as the controls were identical to a 37 he was happy to take the loco, which was in any case not Traffic Dept's affair.  Off we whistled all the way to Hereford without incident, nice listening to the noise going up Llanvihangel.  Loco was in blue livery, but had no headcode, and the Hereford men had left the discs set for class 8, so I didn't see how it could be mistaken for a 37 even at night, but hey ho.

[Dunsignalling]

42 minutes ago, Halvarras said:

 

 

Swindon made a rather late decision to begin repainting the Warships into Western-matching maroon in September 1965, but by the time they outshopped D864 'Zambesi' in blue 14 months later they had overhauled and repainted 32 of them - nearly half of the class.

 

 

 

Judging by the ones that ran up the Waterloo route, I'd think that the Warships probably needed overhauls every 2-3 years anyway, so 32 going through Swindon in 14 months doesn't seem exceptional. 

 

John

[The Johnster]

On 16/12/2023 at 16:27, 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 ?

 

They had plenty of teak stock, but by that time it had been overpainted in brown wartime or early BR or BR crimson/cream, and stripping it back instead of overpainting would have been a lot of work.  Steel bodied stock had been done in brown and presumably would have reverted to that colour had the ER decided on it's own livery. 

 

But it was the ER, not the LNER, and split around that time into the NER as well, not to mention the ScR territory.  Silver was difficult to keep clean, fine for pre-war staffing levels on a low number of premium services but not really what you wanted in the 50s, and garter blue might have been possible.  They seem to have been quite happy with the lined maroon, which I thought looked really good on Thompson stock, and I'll stick my head above the parapet and say that the GW lined green looked better on passenger locos than any LNER livery, especially the garish apple green fairground one.  Bit of dignity, please!

[The Johnster]

On 16/12/2023 at 16:27, 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 ?

 

They had plenty of teak stock, but by that time it had been overpainted in brown wartime or early BR or BR crimson/cream, and stripping it back instead of overpainting would have been a lot of work.  Steel bodied stock had been done in brown and presumably would have reverted to that colour had the ER decided on it's own livery. 

 

But it was the ER, not the LNER, and split around that time into the NER as well, not to mention the ScR territory.  Silver was difficult to keep clean, fine for pre-war staffing levels on a low number of premium services but not really what you wanted in the 50s, and garter blue might have been possible.  They seem to have been quite happy with the lined maroon, which I thought looked really good on Thompson stock, and I'll stick my head above the parapet and say that the GW lined green looked better on passenger locos than any LNER livery, especially the garish apple green fairground one.  Bit of dignity, please!

[Wickham Green too]

4 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

... and he told me how he had once been sent to the stores for a tin of tartan paint.

Did they give him a long weight ?

[Michael Hodgson]

4 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I don't know the details, but my former boss had been an apprentice at Swindon Works in the 1950s, and he told me how he had once been sent to the stores for a tin of tartan paint.

Tell the storeman you've come for a long weight.

 

Beaten to it!

Edited December 17, 2023 by Michael Hodgson

[Dunsignalling]

28 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 

They had plenty of teak stock, but by that time it had been overpainted in brown wartime or early BR or BR crimson/cream, and stripping it back instead of overpainting would have been a lot of work.  Steel bodied stock had been done in brown and presumably would have reverted to that colour had the ER decided on it's own livery. 

 

But it was the ER, not the LNER, and split around that time into the NER as well, not to mention the ScR territory.  Silver was difficult to keep clean, fine for pre-war staffing levels on a low number of premium services but not really what you wanted in the 50s, and garter blue might have been possible.  They seem to have been quite happy with the lined maroon, which I thought looked really good on Thompson stock, and I'll stick my head above the parapet and say that the GW lined green looked better on passenger locos than any LNER livery, especially the garish apple green fairground one.  Bit of dignity, please!

 

TBH, however much some enthusiasts might have remained enraptured by Gresley stock, by 1956, the general public would consider wooden-body coaches to be distinctly dated, whatever their finish.

 

Gresley coaches were already in retreat from top-line duties, displaced by Thompson and rapidly growing numbers of Mk.1 vehicles.  In another few years, quite a few would be cascaded to the West Country, to allow the WR to withdraw non-corridor stock from longer main line stopping services.

 

Reverting to a finish that predated the coaches themselves would have only drawn unwelcome attention to "the age of the train", long before that became an advertising slogan.

 

John

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[F-UnitMad]

5 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

my former boss had been an apprentice at Swindon Works in the 1950s, and he told me how he had once been sent to the stores for a tin of tartan paint.

Tartan paint is a Thing, y'know. 🙄🙄😉😁

https://youtu.be/z1RMVG5Tk6E?si=3qpgwfKHcMEImKHz

[keefer]

A point often missed is that tartan paint should really be applied with a left-handed brush.

[Trestrol]

I think a lot of it was due to trying to gel all the previous companies staff under British Railways. Old rivalrys cam to the for until things were finally clamped down on in the 1960's with the BR design panel. Anyone who's has read the minutes of the design panel in Parkins book on MK1 carriages, will know how the regions wanted to be different from each other.

[stewartingram]

Tartan paint, nobody ever mentions which tartan though?

[Artless Bodger]

48 minutes ago, keefer said:

A point often missed is that tartan paint should really be applied with a left-handed brush.

Fine by me, all my brushes work left handed.

 

I would have thought crimson and maroon would not be universally accepted in Scotland, that was the NBR carriage colour was it not?

[Artless Bodger]

22 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

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.

The photo there makes it look like a bad case of overall rust - someone got carried away with the weathering. Serves as a case study in why not to revert to faux teak.

[Wickham Green too]

36 minutes ago, Artless Bodger said:

I would have thought crimson and maroon would not be universally accepted in Scotland, that was the NBR carriage colour was it not?

Not universally - but four out of five used a 'red[' of some sort !

[Forward!]

It would have been very unwise of BR(ER) to re-adopt a 'teak' livery that would suggest a connection between modern MK1 stock and the previous wooden-bodied stock. As recently as 1952 the Harrow rail disaster had shown the latter up to be downright dangerous compared to their all-steel replacements.

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Forward!

[Nearholmer]

The LT heritage fleet 4-TC, which is a Mk1 family train, of course, was vinyled in faux-teak for a while to look faux-olde-worlde.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Trestrol]

3 hours ago, Forward! said:

It would have been very unwise to re-adopt a 'teak' livery that would suggest a connection between modern MK1 stock and the previous wooden-bodied stock. As recently as 1952 the Harrow rail disaster had shown the latter up to be downright dangerous compared to their all-steel replacements.

 

Crash worthyness has of a carriage is more than what the body is made of. If I remember correctly all the corridor carriages at Harrow were ex LMS. So fitted with screw couplings and BS gangways. Buckeyes and Pullman gangways do provided better protection against telescoping and help keep carriages upright. Ramming a carriage from behind at high speed doesn't do a carriage any good no matter what it's made of.