Armstrong440

Hello again Mikkel.

You have missed a couple of pictures of plated wagons, most notably in Atkins the TOTEMs on p.79 / 81 / 83 and the ballast hopper on p.310.

Also the tank wagon on p.504 is painted white as its service livery, not photographic grey.  Lettering is in red, so would the plates (which are painted with a white background) be highlighted in red as well?  Note that its solebars are painted body colour, not chassis colour, whereas the drinking water tank wagon on page 244 has its solebars painted underframe colour.  This may be due to the first vehicle being painted for Class A products though, but if the drinking water tank has its solebars painted chassis colour, might this not be taken as a guide for other wagons and colours?  The ballast wagon on page 315 was photographed in 1888 and is thus in red livery.  The underframe - including iron solebars - is most definitely darker and almost certainly black.  This is a shame, as I personally prefer the look of your wagons with the solebars in body colour.  As an aside, the ballast wagon also carries the central white stripe which, I thought, was supposed to denote either-side brakes (as does the coal wagon on page 234.)

Having thought a little longer on the subject of cast plates, do we actually know that they were painted grey at all?  If a wagon is dirty then it's going to be hard to tell from a photo, but the 4-plankers on page 54 (both nice and clean fresh out of the workshops and presumably in red livery) seem to be carrying plates which are distinctly darker than the body colour.  Perhaps the plates were black.  The more modern plate illustrated on page 66 certainly seems to be painted black, so was there a changeover at some time from grey plates to black, or were they perhaps painted black from the outset?  Numbers need to be plainly visible, and white numbers on a black background are going to be the most visible combination, regardless of body colour.

One fly in the ointment is the 4-planker on page 276 which, being photographed in 1894, should be painted red. It seems to have plates which are distinctly lighter than the body, which itself seems to be very dark indeed.

Hello Mikkel.  An excellent article on a topic very close to my heart.  I have one point to make, and one question to ask...

Firstly, as others have mentioned, I really don't like the look of the red wagon with grey plates.  The cast plates were painted body colour on grey wagons, so are there any grounds to assume they weren't painted body colour on red wagons?

And then, just to throw another spanner in the works...  If 1904 is to be taken as the changeover date from red to grey livery (which is a very reasonable conclusion to reach) then in the case of "transitional" liveries where wagons carry cast plates but are painted with the 25" "GW", is there any evidence or suggestion that the large "GW" was ever applied to a red wagon?  Were all the wagons painted with transitional liveries new builds, and hence grey, or were wagons ever taken out of traffic (and might therefore have been red) for the new-fangled lettering to be applied?