Brake Tender Blue

[AGR Model Store]

Hello RMweb

 

I'm having a brake tender resprayed into BR Blue, is/was the brake tender blue the same shade of Blue that would have been used on loco's etc ?

Or would it of been freight BR blue ?

 

Any help please & thank you advance 

 

Anthony

[tractionman]

this one looks quite 'interesting' in its use of blue(s):

 

https://www.departmentals.com/photo/083478

[AGR Model Store]

33 minutes ago, tractionman said:

this one looks quite 'interesting' in its use of blue(s):

 

https://www.departmentals.com/photo/083478

Quite run down blue, Was more looking for fresh out of the shops...

[Jeremy Cumberland]

 

48 minutes ago, AGR Model Store said:

Or would it of been freight BR blue ?

What's freight BR blue? I thought corporate image BR only had one blue, applied to locomotives, carriages, DMUs, EMUs, newspaper vans, carflats and doubtless other things I have forgotten about. And brake tenders.

 

Before Rail Blue, brake tenders were green. Most photos of green brake tenders show them with yellow ends, but I am not sure that they all had yellow ends when painted blue. I think the practice of coupling them in front of the locomotive might have ceased by then.

 

Brake tenders when I saw them were invariably very dirty.

[melmoth]

For the sake of completeness, there's also the 'ice' blue applied at one time to insulated vans and containers. But not to brake tenders.

[Michael Hodgson]

Weren't they simply painted rail blue ?

And weathered with lineside muck - whatever was on the track before the days of controlled emission toilets.  No wonder they had the blues.

[Phatbob]

It was hard to tell what was under all the muck they usually carried, but my recolection is that they were BR rail blue with yellows panels on the ends, even though they were no longer propelled by that time.
HTH

[Mol_PMB]

Search for brake tender on Flickr and there are plenty of colour photos of all types in a variety of liveries. Some blue examples with different amounts of yellow:

From Ernie's railway archive:

 

From George Woods:

 

From Antony Guppy:

 

Two from Hugh Searle:

 

 

From Roger Goodrum:

 

On shades of blue, there was of course Electric Blue, but not on brake tenders. From Mr Ratty:

 

[AGR Model Store]

So standard BR Rail Blue will be fine ?

[cctransuk]

Yes!

 

CJI.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, AGR Model Store said:

So standard BR Rail Blue will be fine ?

Unless you want a green one!

[Halvarras]

Wasn't 'Freight BR Blue' just BR Blue with a layer of filth?!

 

Interestingly, from the above photos of the more numerous curvy ones at least, these appeared to always have the yellow ends applied as two panels, upper and lower. It's hard to believe there weren't a few with just one large panel. Granted the yellow on the curve wouldn't have been very effective as a warning device (the same comment could be made about the large expanse of yellow on the cabsides of locos in Large Logo Blue livery), especially when the usual layers of muck settled on it from above, but such practical considerations were not always applicable on the railway!

 

If your model is one of the Hornby Magazine specials produced by Dapol, I and others have found that the handrails and brake wheels stick out too far and pushing these in a bit improves the appearance. It's necessary to drill slightly larger holes to take the thicker shank of the brake wheel behind the rim. Mine's a blue one, by the way!

 

 

[Mol_PMB]

B2YP seems to have been the more common blue variant but there were some BFYE, such as this example:

Or the second one here, from Murray Lewis:

This from Nick Perring archives is perhaps the clearest I found:

from Andy Kirkham, another SR electric brake tender which may have no yellow panels at all, though it’s hard to be sure.

See also the class 73 photo in my first post. 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

Before looking at pictures in response to this thread, I would have said that brake tenders in the mid- to late-70s didn't have yellow ends. Now I think it is probably just that they got very dirty. I've just found Paul Bartlett's page: https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/braketender

B964024 looks to have blue ends, but close inspection shows the line between the blue and the yellow on the top panel. B964002 has a bit more of the yellow visible, not that you'd really notice.

 

There appear to be three main styles of yellow ends:

• All yellow: B964113 is the clearest example on the Paul Bartlett page. B964014 is almost certainly the same, as are the ones Mol pointed out above. There is no blue on the end anywhere.
• 2 yellow panels: These have a blue "bonnet", a blue arch above the top panel, blue sides to the bottom yellow panel, and most of them seem to have rounded top corners to the bottom panel. B964046 is the clearest example, and B964083 is another good one. Some didn't have rounded top corners, for example B964006. Some have a short bottom panel (more of a stripe, really), such as B964002, and B964029 in the second Hugh Searle picture in Mol's first post.
• A bottom yellow panel/stripe and no top panel: B964007 is the only example on the Paul Bartlett page.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 minute ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Before looking at pictures in response to this thread, I would have said that brake tenders in the mid- to late-70s didn't have yellow ends.

Some of the green ones didn't have yellow panels.

[Ramrig]

2 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

B2YP seems to have been the more common blue variant but there were some BFYE, such as this example:

Or the second one here, from Murray Lewis:

This from Nick Perring archives is perhaps the clearest I found:

from Andy Kirkham, another SR electric brake tender which may have no yellow panels at all, though it’s hard to be sure.

See also the class 73 photo in my first post. 

that is an unusual load on the third wagon of the Western photo. It looks like one of those 3 wheel invalid cars from the 70’s as per here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invacar

[Steamport Southport]

10 minutes ago, Ramrig said:

that is an unusual load on the third wagon of the Western photo. It looks like one of those 3 wheel invalid cars from the 70’s as per here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invacar

 

Unusual, but quite common to find photos of them being transported by train. ISTR there was a previous thread on them.

 

The similar size Isetta cars were built at Brighton Works which didn't have road access so they all left by rail.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta#BMW_Isetta_(United_Kingdom)

 

 

Jason

[Hal Nail]

On 01/05/2024 at 12:13, Mol_PMB said:

On shades of blue, there was of course Electric Blue, but not on brake tenders. From Mr Ratty:

 

Not on AL6's either - they were rail blue.

[Erixtar1992]

Its a slightly larger brake tender than OO… lol