UK D&E Railway Modelling

Hi there. Someone pointed me towards this thread. Other than touching up a few spots, I've not used enamels or acrylics for about 10 years now, when I was introduced to Cellulose paints. The problem I had was that I didn't know what the actual colours being used for British Rail shades were, so I spent a few years doing some research. In the late 80's and into the 90's, there was a push against depots and works mixing their own paint... and standardised livery diagrams were created to make sure all stock matched. Not wanting InterCity stripes to be at different heights, all measurements used 'Rail level' as a datum point. Here's an example for an original version of NSE for the Class 47. As you can see, the thickness and angles for the stripes are very precise. in addition, the standardisation of liveries included which undercoat to use, how many coats of paint, and how many layers of varnish over the top to achieve the perfect appearance and resistance to the weather and carriage washers. When we look at the real thing, the first thing to realise about railway colours, is that we often look at them in photos and on the internet, but also they may have months and years of use when that photo was taken. InterCity were very clever to use tan as the bottom shade... it hides the brake dust and other weathering effects in traffic. But we also have to remember that our perception of a colour may include that weathering. Manufacturers are in a difficult position; Given everything is made in China, they rely on photos to come up with a shade that looks right. But this is fraught with problems. Imagine you're trying to figure out what paint shade was used... and you find a photo on Flickr... Lets look at the layers of problems. 1: The camera film will have variations depending on the quality of the film 2: Processing of the film depends on how the photo printer was set up. 3: 20 years later, someone scanned their old photos... with the quality of the scanner and how the software interpreted the image to turn it into an image 4: Once it was scanned, they may have put it through Photoshop, or other graphics package. 5: Someone in China is given that photo as a source, and tried to match it with whatever paint shades they have available. I can certainly say I've seen my own photos come out different... with my old scanner producing images that were far darker than ones on my current printer/scanner device! So is it really a surprise that some manufacturers can't get paint shades right? And then we have the changes in livery. Here's a photo of a InterCity Swallow HST powercar coupled to an InterCity Executive TGS. Executive Dark Grey has a blue tint to it. Falcon Grey has a brown tint. The rest of the livery is the same... Executive Light Grey, Rail Red and an off-white. Note that red is one of the worst shades for weathering... it bleaches under the sun. Just look at original Railfreight Distribution logos on class 90's, and how quickly they bleached to a point that you could barely see them by the mid 90's!! The original NSE Blue ( When we look at this photo, it's important to remember that the rail red on the TGS may be 4 years since it was painted, it's been under the sun for a long time, and it's been through the carriage washer numerous times before this photo was taken. When it comes to Executive Light Grey on models... I think the worst offender is Hornby. They use a colour that is a creamy yellow, and far too bold. Here's an example of their Mk3 DVT (first batch) compared with an old Airfix Mk2d I painted with Pantone 452, as used on the real thing. You can see how cream it is!! Bachmann's Executive Light Grey is much better, and very close to the Pantone 452 I use. Hornby also has problems getting InterCity livery correct. The red stripe is almost always too red... the thickness of stripes varies, with the white stripe being two-thirds of the thickness of the red, but Hornby has released models with both stripes the same thickness, or the white being half the size. In the last year, they changed the Falcon Grey to something with a greenish tint to it, which looks awful!! For clarification, the paint shades used for InterCity Swallow is: Falcon Grey: Pantone 412 Rail White: Pantone 441 InterCity Executive Light Grey: Pantone 452 Rail Red: British Standard BS381C/593 'Rail Red' Warning Panel Yellow: BS4800/08E51. For old InterCity Executive, replace Falcon Grey for: InterCity Executive Dark Grey: BS4800/00A13 'Storm Grey'. Since 'Mainline' livery also uses these shades, it's worth noting that this livery comes in two variations. 'Mainline' livery had already been in use since Jan 1988 with a full yellow end and tiny numbers. This version used Executive Dark Grey (BS4800/00A13). However in 1989 there was a project to limit the number of loco liveries to just four types (not including NSE); 'InterCity Swallow' for InterCity express trains. 'Mainline' for mixed traffic work Subsector 'Railfreight' for freight work BR General for departmental work (hated, but soon given the yellow stripe to brighten it up). Mainline was tweaked with a half yellow end (it was hard to keep the windscreen area clean because the carriage washer couldn't clean it fully) And because they were used for hauling InterCity Swallow (with italic INTERCITY lettering) coaches, such as weekend diversions, etc) they changed to Falcon Grey to match the coaches. The good news for modellers is that I've given my livery research data to at least two manufacturers, Bachmann and Dapol, both of whom now produce models from that data.... so if you model the British Rail sectorisation era, you probably have models on your layout based on my research. Bachmann's new Mk2f coaches show the difference in dark greys between InterCity Swallow and InterCity Executive. If you own a 47834 in Swallow, the dark grey uses their executive dark grey as used on coaches... but the new upcoming 47/8 will have the browny tint. Other liveries based on my research from Bachmann are; NSE (both versions), Centro 150 and the Parcels and Jaffa Cake Class 419. I'll leave you with something interesting I noticed when compiling the data... often paint shades were widely used on different liviers, not just the one they were creating. Rail Red on InterCity livery, is the same as the red stripe on Class 20's and original 58's (and Classes 26, 31, 37, 47, and 56). 'Poppy' (BS4800/04E53) is used for TPO coaches, the red stripe on NSE, and Railfreight Distribution logos. 'Tartan Blue (BS4800/18E53) used on early NSE livery, is also the same shade of blue for Railfreight Construction, Metals and Petroleum logos! Cheers Laura