BR diesel liveries 1950s-60s

[Wickham Green]

With all that sea-salty air around you'd have thought a repaint would have been necessary sooner than that .......... they don't look in bad nick though.

[Martin S-C]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Quoting my post above: "D2574 was released to traffic in July 1958".

 

It was a Sottish engine for all of its short life, I think.

Thanks. My reading comprehension was never my best mark in English.

Well, 2574 will be spending the summer of 1959 in the Forest of Dean in my version of reality.

It is a pity the Class 14s were too late for my time period, I do like them. The Heljan model is very nice and they were used in the Forest, there's photos of them shunting the Berry Wiggins facility at Whimsey in the mid-60s in one of the Lightmoor Press titles. Maybe I can bend time a weeny bit.

 

EDIT: I just noticed in the photo of D2574 that the cable protectors/pipes for the lamps seem to be a different colour to the red bufferbeam. I wonder what colour it might be? Yellow? Orange? A light green?

Edited July 23, 2019 by Martin S-C

[Gibbo675]

Hi Martin,

 

Class 25 D5159 carried an orange warning panel painted over the more usual yellow from just above the marker lights to jut under the windows with the standard yellow below the lights to the bottom of the body side. D5153 carried a similar scheme using a paler shade of yellow over the normal shade similarly.

 

http://www.derbysulzers.com/25009.html

 

Gibbo.

[Enterprisingwestern]

4 hours ago, russ p said:

Going off topic on the photograph of 2574 , is that the worlds most complex stench pipe system on the building behind? 

 

All leadwork too, we had proper plumbers back in the day!

 

Mike.

[The Johnster]

20 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

No "seem" about it. The CI wasn't announced until 1965. Only the boxing in of writing on wagons predates the CI,, and then only by 12 months. As already mentioned by giving us your period you reveal the one problem you have is that the strict ideas on how steam locos should be painted had been lost - Black for Freight, lined Black for MT and Green for Passenger had given way to some MTs being green and even lined green and some large locos were maroon. Also the Mark 1 corridor stock began to have roundels on the side.

 

Try to get hold of a cheap copy of https://www.amazon.co.uk/Railway-Liveries-British-Steam-1948-68/dp/0711018561

 

Paul

The first appearance of the blue livery, and blue/grey coaches, was in 1964 with the 'XP64" train, which AFAIK also marked the appearance of the single sliding ventilator windows that became a subsequent feature of mk2 coaches.  Early 'integral bodyshell' mk2s had appeared from 1963 on WR, SR, and ECML trains, in lined maroon or malachite green with double sliding vent windows, though, AFAIK all Swindon built FKs.  The B4 bogies were applied to new coaches from 1962 at Swindon.

 

D1733, painted to run with the XP64 set, was in all over rail blue with the new double arrow symbol in a red square panel beneath the cab side windows; it carried a 'normal' syp and the window surrounds were in rail blue.  Underframe was brown and IIRC buffer beams black.

 

Some Hymeks that received the all over blue livery with syp had their window surrounds also painted blue, and others retained the light grey surrounds from the green livery.

 

Some very early dmus did not have the whiskers or white cab roof, and I would not swear to whiskers and white cab roofs appearing simultaneously.  There were a variety of greens used; early sets had the 'electric green' used on some non SR emus like the Shenfield and Tyneside sets, then a lighter green appeared, and I think whiskers were in use by this time.  These were both unlined liveries but the double lining with cream stripes appeared shortly afterwards, followed by the appearance of sets in a much darker bottle green livery; AFAIK no bottle green sets ever appeared unlined or without white cab roofs and whiskers.

 

Syps, when they appeared on dmus, could be seen with any of the above liveries.  

 

Full warning panels started appearing on everything and anything in 1967, and were sometimes applied at main depots rather than in main works paintshops, so you could see dirty green liveried locos with bright shiny new full yellow ends.  The first locos built with these and the blue livery were the D400s and later series of D83xx EE type 1s.  AFAIK no Class 20 was built with blue livery and syp, but I'm happy to be contradicted on this!

Edited July 23, 2019 by The Johnster

[Nearholmer]

Conduit for wiring should be orange.

 

There is/was an entire colour-coding system for pipes, but I’ve forgotten all except “ my bit”, i.e. electrical.

[The Johnster]

For brake pipes, it was red for the train brake vacuum or air, yellow for the air reservoir pipe, and white for 'piped through' vacuum vehicles.  Can't remember what colour steam heating pipes were painted now, though.

[jim.snowdon]

Was blue not used for the vacuum reservoir pipe on the first generation DMUs?

 

Jim

[Nearholmer]

Yes, and in other circumstances as the code for water, usually cooling water.

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

Brown is for lubricating oil, orange is for electrical and when mixed together 50-50 produced the golden colour as worn by the Westerns.

 

Gibbo.

[MidlandRed]

D7033 was the first Hymek and I'm pretty sure the first application of blue with overall yellow front (and yellow around the windows). Done in 1966 and demonstrated at Derby Works as the new 'standard' approach to this, to improve visibility of approaching trains for lineside workers. A news item appeared in the Railway Magazine at the time. As stated, the Hymeks with blue and syp sometimes had white trim around the windows, and possibly more rarely, were all over blue. 

 

As well as the Thornaby experimental front panels on class 25/0s, there was the other visibility experiment involving a selection of stock in the very early 60s (including D5578 in blue and D5579 in a version of golden ochre). Once again there is a published article on this (but I can't remember where.....)! I believe it was from this that the small yellow warning panel application was selected. 

 

Interesting that the WR used white cab rooves on DMUs until the blue era (with full yellow panel). Was it also a warning device or to keep the staff cooler? If a warning device they got filthy very quickly - especially from exhaust pipe on class 121, 122 and 128. 

Edited July 23, 2019 by MidlandRed
Incorrect auto correct

[Rugd1022]

1 hour ago, MidlandRed said:

D7033 was the first Hymek and I'm pretty sure the first application of blue with overall yellow front (and yellow around the windows). Done in 1966 and demonstrated at Derby Works as the new 'standard' approach to this, to improve visibility of approaching trains for lineside workers. A news item appeared in the Railway Magazine at the time. As stated, the Hymeks with blue and syp sometimes had white trim around the windows, and possibly more rarely, were all over blue. 

 

As as well as the Thornaby experimental front panels in class 25/0s, there was the other experiment involving a selection of stock in the very early 60s (including D5572 in blue and D5578 in a version of golden ochre). Once again there is a published article on this (but I can't remember where.....)! 

 

I'd forgotten about D7033 in '66, didn't know it was sent up to Derby though.

 

D7004, D7007 and D70051 were the Hymeks in all over blue / small yellow panels but one of them (I forget which) subsequently had the off white window surrounds added later.

[John Isherwood]

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

....  AFAIK no bottle green sets ever appeared unlined or without white cab roofs and whiskers.

 

Really? Surely I've seen photos of high-density DMUs in plain unlined dark green?

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[The Johnster]

More likely ‘electric green’, John, but someone’ll turn up a photo proving me wrong no doubt.  Electric green was a pretty dark colour, and not too different from bottle in a black and white photo.  It had a hint of blue hue to it that the bottle lacked, though.  

 

Bottle was very dark and the cream lining set if off to look even darker.  It almost looks black in some ‘contrasty’ photos. 

[Michael Edge]

9 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

Good thing it is red on my model then! Michael - do you happen to know when D2574 was built? I bought the model because I liked it but it seems some examples were built after 1959, if that's the case with D2574 I shall have to renumber her.

Sent away 18/7/58 to Stranraer.

I did say red painted radiators were fairly common practice but it isn't easy to tell from b/w photos - I'll have a look through the colour slides to see if there's anything there.

[stewartingram]

1 hour ago, MidlandRed said:

As well as the Thornaby experimental front panels on class 25/0s, there was the other visibility experiment involving a selection of stock in the very early 60s (including D5572 in blue and D5578 in a version of golden ochre). Once again there is a published article on this (but I can't remember where.....)! I believe it was from this that the small yellow warning panel application was selected. 

D5578 was the blue one, no white stripes. 

D5579 was the golden ochre version, in the same style as the standard green version with white stripes.

D5572 was a standard green, but Triang/Hornby originally modelled their 31 as D5572 in green, with white stripes. It was later produced in the same style, but electric blue with white stripes - totally fictional.

[stewartingram]

50 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Really? Surely I've seen photos of high-density DMUs in plain unlined dark green?

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

Class 125 was dark green with no lining, but I couldn't name the shade.

 

Stewart

[MidlandRed]

1 hour ago, Rugd1022 said:

 

I'd forgotten about D7033 in '66, didn't know it was sent up to Derby though.

 

D7004, D7007 and D70051 were the Hymeks in all over blue / small yellow panels but one of them (I forget which) subsequently had the off white window surrounds added later.

 

Im not sure whether D7033 was painted at Derby or repainted elsewhere and taken there for demonstration/publicity purposes. 

[MidlandRed]

28 minutes ago, stewartingram said:

D5578 was the blue one, no white stripes. 

D5579 was the golden ochre version, in the same style as the standard green version with white stripes.

D5572 was a standard green, but Triang/Hornby originally modelled their 31 as D5572 in green, with white stripes. It was later produced in the same style, but electric blue with white stripes - totally fictional.

 

Thanks for the correction - I've corrected the original post as well to avoid confusion. You presumed right regarding Tri-ang and my mixing up of numbers - i have both versions but as with most of my 60s stock, they received coats of Humbrol Rail Blue, full yellow ends and renumbered to something I was more familiar with and received the BR transfers - in about 1968... a Hornby (yes the proper one - E3002) class 81 received the same treatment and became E3016 with raised numbers!! The other E3002 

remained electric blue but was defaced by the addition of a syp - such is the desire of youth for all things new!! 

[keefer]

Regarding DMUs, if you go to https://www.railcar.co.uk/type/ then click on the class number you want, there's a pic of them in original condition (quite often what looks like an official portrait). When you're on the page for a particular class, click on 'liveries' in the LH menu for a description and time-line.

Edited July 23, 2019 by keefer

[BernardTPM]

2 hours ago, stewartingram said:

D5578 was the blue one, no white stripes. 

D5579 was the golden ochre version, in the same style as the standard green version with white stripes.

D5572 was a standard green, but Triang/Hornby originally modelled their 31 as D5572 in green, with white stripes. It was later produced in the same style, but electric blue with white stripes - totally fictional.

Both Triang's early blue Brush Type 2s were D5578. The first in 1962 (before the green version came out) had light blue round the windows, so was otherwise almost right, the second in 1966 was fictional*. The green version was D5572. I used to have one of the second blue version bought secondhand circa 1970 which I later fitted with two power bogies.

 

* though an article by Brian Haresnape in Trains Illustrated in 1961 did have some colour plates of suggested liveries for the Brush Type 2 that included ochre and blue with white stripes.

Edited July 23, 2019 by BernardTPM

[Clive Mortimore]

3 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

Really? Surely I've seen photos of high-density DMUs in plain unlined dark green?

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

Lea Valley sets out of Liverpool Street. Edit...Beaten by Stewart

 

The green used by Derby was almost loco green, if not loco green.

 

Wolverton used a similar dark green on the LMR EMUs (AM4) . There are a few photos of AM4s on loan at Liverpool Street alongside various ER units. The ER units are in a much light/brighter green, like SR units but the LMR sets are the same dark green as the Lea Valley DMUs.

Edited July 23, 2019 by Clive Mortimore

[Clive Mortimore]

7 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

 

Brown is for lubricating oil, orange is for electrical and when mixed together 50-50 produced the golden colour as worn by the Westerns.

 

Gibbo.

Give over Gibbo....number 15 was painted in Stroudley's Improved Engine Green, same colour as D5579 and the Brighton works Terrier......and later Stepney on the Bluebell.

[Clive Mortimore]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

More likely ‘electric green’, John, but someone’ll turn up a photo proving me wrong no doubt.  Electric green was a pretty dark colour, and not too different from bottle in a black and white photo.  It had a hint of blue hue to it that the bottle lacked, though.  

 

Bottle was very dark and the cream lining set if off to look even darker.  It almost looks black in some ‘contrasty’ photos. 

EMUs and DMUs were supposed to be painted in SR green. Now this appears to be different to the post 1956 green used on hauled coaching stock. 4 CORs always looked lighter than the train to Southampton when as a family we visited my nan in Farnborough.

 

Some early units from Derby works were in this lighter EMU green but most came out in a Brunswick darker green.

Swindon seem to use a very similar shade to Derby. Most of the private contractors started off using the lighter shade but later deliveries seem to have been darker as were railway workshop repaints. Pressed Steel always used the darker shade, and the first few units were not lined.

 

One day someone will do a detailed account of DMU greens along with their BS numbers or the BR codes.

 

The Tyneside EMUs were in the lighter SR EMU green, this can be seen quite clearly when they are next to the the darker green Met Cammel units that replaced them.

[Michael Edge]

I can't find any Hunslet colour photos of the later batch of 05s but here is one of the earlier ones with wasp stripes and a red painted radiator grille. Lighting conduit painted orange on this one.

 

 

Something else that nobody seems to have noticed, both these Hunslet photos show locos with bright coupling rods, only the cranks are painted red.