GWR Fruit D

[Jollibob]

Hi guys,

I'm just in the process of doing some good old fashioned kit building. Currently, I've just started a Fruit D. I like to model the early BR period and I was wondering what colours these vans would have been painted in? Many images of models I find online show it in crimson, or GWR brown. I could do with a few grey wagons, were these wagons ever painted in such colours?

 

Regards

 

Rob.

Edited March 28 by Jollibob
Grammar

[Miss Prism]

http://www.gwr.org.uk/liverieswagonsiphon.html#:~:text=BR(W) continued painting some vehicles brown for a few years after nationalisation%3B thereafter%2C any surviving NPCCS vehicles being repainted appeared in unlined crimson or (from 1957) maroon.

[Steamport Southport]

Passenger rated stock I'm afraid. The late survivors even got BR Blue.

 

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/fruitd

 

 

 

Jason

[drduncan]

You’d have to back to WW1 to find fruit vans in wagon grey. I think the exact year was 1916…certainly that’s when the fish wagons went brown.

Duncan 

[Jollibob]

Hey there.

This has been helpful. I like brown but I think on this occasion I will paint it crimson then. 

 

Many thanks,

 

Rob.

[57xx]

To answer the other bit in your post, if you want some grey wagons, you should be looking at some unfitted Minks or vans from other constituents. If you like kits, there are plenty of LMS, LNER and the odd Southern one from Ratio/Parkside and Cambrian.

[Cwmtwrch]

On 28/03/2024 at 06:40, drduncan said:

You’d have to back to WW1 to find fruit vans in wagon grey. I think the exact year was 1916…certainly that’s when the fish wagons went brown.

Fruit A goods fruit vans to Y8 of 1937-8 and the conversions of W10 to Y10 a year later were painted grey by the GWR. Since both were VB they would have been painted bauxite at first repaint by BR. The same is also true of all GWR Fruit B Banana van diagrams. The only brown vehicles were the long wheelbase Passenger Fruit Vans, Fruit C and Fruit D, later coded Pasfruit C and D.

[drduncan]

1 hour ago, Cwmtwrch said:

Fruit A goods fruit vans to Y8 of 1937-8 and the conversions of W10 to Y10 a year later were painted grey by the GWR. Since both were VB they would have been painted bauxite at first repaint by BR. The same is also true of all GWR Fruit B Banana van diagrams. The only brown vehicles were the long wheelbase Passenger Fruit Vans, Fruit C and Fruit D, later coded Pasfruit C and D.

Quite right. The non passenger rated wagons built in the interwar period were grey, although survivors of the SWB Y1 and Y2 NPCS fruits would have gone into brown at the same time as the LWB NCPS fruits C and D, but the OP was asking about the passenger rated Fruits,  specifically the Fruit D…

 

I should have been more precise with my terminology but I thought in the context of the OP’s question all would be clear. I’m sorry if anyone was confused.

Duncan

Edited March 30 by drduncan

[PaulG]

The M&GNR Society own Diagram Y14 Fruit D W92097W, built by BR at Swindon, which according to David Larkin, as part of Lot 30383 in 1960.

 

The assumption is that the van was out shopped in the post 1956 BR Crimson Lake (Maroon), albeit during rubbing down of the paintwork, the later post 1965 BR blue was found.

 

The plan is to refurbish the van in "as built" condition, and the question is, should the van ends be black or as some authors state, post 1956 van ends were the same as the body sides, albeit this comment tends to be linked to the time workshops spray painted stock, and I've not read when Swindon adopted spray painting for rolling stock.

 

Comments gratefully received

 

Paul

[Steamport Southport]

Ends started to be painted body colour from 1964 so quite a short period of fully Green or Maroon coaches being painted. But they do seem to have been quite prolific at painting them.

 

 

 

Jason

[hmrspaul]

8 hours ago, PaulG said:

The M&GNR Society own Diagram Y14 Fruit D W92097W, built by BR at Swindon, which according to David Larkin, as part of Lot 30383 in 1960.

 

The assumption is that the van was out shopped in the post 1956 BR Crimson Lake (Maroon), albeit during rubbing down of the paintwork, the later post 1965 BR blue was found.

 

The plan is to refurbish the van in "as built" condition, and the question is, should the van ends be black or as some authors state, post 1956 van ends were the same as the body sides, albeit this comment tends to be linked to the time workshops spray painted stock, and I've not read when Swindon adopted spray painting for rolling stock.

 

Comments gratefully received

 

Paul

None of my photos, and some are in the 1950s, suggest the ends were any different in colour to the sides. Certainly appear repainted (maroon presumably) after 1957.  Before that in Crimson. https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/fruitd/ed495eb9  Yellow lining paint for the writing. 

 

Paul

[PaulG]

16 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

None of my photos, and some are in the 1950s, suggest the ends were any different in colour to the sides. Certainly appear repainted (maroon presumably) after 1957.  Before that in Crimson. https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/fruitd/ed495eb9  Yellow lining paint for the writing. 

 

Paul

 

Thank you Paul for your reply.

 

I have a "reasonable" number of railway books - the wife says I have too many - but I couldn't see a positive "all four sides/ends maroon for new stock post 1956", whereas  the earlier BR crimson livery did state ends black and many of these vehicles would still have been around into the 1960's with the earlier livery.  I've past the "good news" onto the team at Holt Station, where they have started to paint the van ends black! 

 

Paul

[bécasse]

Can I suggest that wooden-bodied slab-sided vehicles such as Fruit Ds and Southern U-vans were painted crimson on both sides and ends (but had never been lined) whereas NPCS vehicles that were more akin to passenger-carrying vehicles in their appearance were painted crimson (originally lined), or occasionally crimson and cream, on their sides and black on their ends. That is certainly what my memory suggests and would have been logical in treating the former of vehicles as akin to wagons (which were, of course, treated in the same way all round) albeit in crimson rather than brown/bauxite.

[Steamport Southport]

28 minutes ago, bécasse said:

Can I suggest that wooden-bodied slab-sided vehicles such as Fruit Ds and Southern U-vans were painted crimson on both sides and ends (but had never been lined) whereas NPCS vehicles that were more akin to passenger-carrying vehicles in their appearance were painted crimson (originally lined), or occasionally crimson and cream, on their sides and black on their ends. That is certainly what my memory suggests and would have been logical in treating the former of vehicles as akin to wagons (which were, of course, treated in the same way all round) albeit in crimson rather than brown/bauxite.

 

The Southern vans definitely had black ends until they changed the specifications.

 

The only thing I can think of is that the WR carried on using the method they used for Brown vehicles and painted the ends the same as the sides. Could they have been maintained/overhauled/painted by the wagon department rather than carriage?

 

Unless someone finds a colour photo showing the ends or has evidence then it is a mystery.

 

 

 

Jason

[Not Jeremy]

I have a picture of a more or less ex works fruit D W92057W at Kingswear which is most definitely maroon with black painted ends, I (as Wild Swan) hope to publish it a new book in the near future with other colour pictures of stock in service. On the other hand, on the rear cover of "Dorset Steam" from Capital Transport, is a fab picture of a fruit D in all over maroon. Didn't the change to body colour ends come in with the spraying rather than brush painting of stock? 

 

Great looking vehicles in any livery!

 

Simon

[hmrspaul]

BR failed to get all the numerous workshops to follow their painting instructions. The old ways were difficult to change, so we get wood framed open wagons being repainted. So one works painting ends black and others with ends the same as the sides seems likely. 

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

The Southern vans definitely had black ends until they changed the specifications.

 

Jason

Non of these mid 1950s photos of BYs appear to have an end darker than the sides https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srby/e2bf29388

https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srby/e2cedc18b   https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srby/e399adca5   

 

Paul

[Marshall5]

I spent a considerable amount of time looking for colour photos of NPCS taken in the 1957-64 period when painting a B.R. built FruitD, an ex LNER Dia.9 Horsebox, ex GWR Siphon G and two ex S.R CCT/PMV's.  The conclusion I came to was that they all had black ends in that period.  When spray painting was introduced in 1964/5 the ends became the same colour as the sides so only a very few vehicles would have maroon or green ends before the change to Rail Blue. Paul's website is an invaluable reference but unfortunately, unless it is of an ex works vehicle, a B&W image can't really be relied on. Most photos show that these wooden bodied vehicles were seldom cleaned and little or no colour would be discernible under the overall filth.

Ray.

[Hal Nail]

8 hours ago, Marshall5 said:

little or no colour would be discernible under the overall filth.

As a case in point, the buffers and underframe look exactly the same as the sides and the ends and they can't all be the same colour!

[PaulG]

Following comments above, I asked the M&GN Society team repainting the Diagram Y14 Fruit D W92097W, (built by BR at Swindon, which according to David Larkin, as part of Lot 30383 in 1960),  when stripping back the paint for signs of previous livery, and have found black paint on the van ends, underneath the later BR blue.

 

 

Thank you for all your comments. 

 

Paul

[57xx]

Going back to the beginning of their life, does anyone have any good picture references for them in the as-built shirtbutton livery? I can find one in Atkins et al (but can't see the Return To branding) and one in Russell's Pictorial history of Coaches.

[K14]

2873 branded To work between Paddington & Aberdare:

https://www.licensestorehouse.com/rights-managed/steam-museum-of-the-gwr/carriages-wagons/wagons/10-ton-ventilated-fruit-van-no-2873-9115974.html

 

2885 ex-works, branded Return to Old Oak Common - looks to be a scan of the image in Russell.

 

2881 in rather used condition, also branded Return to OOC

 

Pete S.

[johnofwessex]

There is a Fruit D at Cranmore under overhaul.

 

Interesting to see that it was fitted with a dynamo & lights as built.

 

Clearly something you would need on a gangwayed vehicle but why on a non gangwayed one?

[bécasse]

Fruit vans would have regularly been unloaded in the early (usually) pre-dawn hours of the morning. They often carried a very time-sensitive perishable load which had to reach that morning's markets which themselves were very early. Obviously the van interior didn't have to be lit for the load (typically pummets of some description) to be unloaded  but lighting would have helped speed the task without damaging anything.

[Cwmtwrch]

6 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

Clearly something you would need on a gangwayed vehicle but why on a non gangwayed one?

4 hours ago, bécasse said:

lighting would have helped speed the task without damaging anything.

A van might contain part consignments for different destinations; if so, it would be necessary to be able to read labels...

[57xx]

18 hours ago, K14 said:

2873 branded To work between Paddington & Aberdare:

https://www.licensestorehouse.com/rights-managed/steam-museum-of-the-gwr/carriages-wagons/wagons/10-ton-ventilated-fruit-van-no-2873-9115974.html

 

2885 ex-works, branded Return to Old Oak Common - looks to be a scan of the image in Russell.

 

2881 in rather used condition, also branded Return to OOC

 

Pete S.

 

Thanks Pete, the lower one is the one from Russell, the middle one from Atkins. The Atkins scan may be of an original print, it's much better than in the book. Looking closer at it, is it a trick of the light or is the end in black? I remember seeing a note of when black ends came in but can't find it again.

 

The HMRS transfers are a bit lacking in appropriate Return To branding, no OOC that will fit and most are in italics and very hard to read when back to front. I might have to take a picture and do some photoshop flipping! 

Edited May 5 by 57xx