GWR Light and Dark Stone Paint

Hi

Was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of a supplier of GWR Light and Dark Stone Paint. I have a few items that need a repaint and am struggling to find any information which would even allow to get it mixed. I would appreciate any info such as alternativs or RAL numbers.

Thanks

Matt

 

There's a website 'Stationbuildings' or something similar which may be of assistance - sorry I can't recall it exactly.....

 

It has the Dulux codes here

http://www.stationcolours.info/index.php?p=1_5_GWR

You can then put them in here (I showed you an example for light stone)

http://www.e-paint.co.uk/Colour_alt...Ref=S 2030-Y40R&metallic2=False&cDescription=

 

Try a phone call to our friends at somewhere like the SVR or GWR, I'm sure they can help, when I worked at Arley I'm sure it was Williamsons who the SVR used for the paint.

 

Thanks Chaps,

I've a couple of leads to follow thanks to you.

Matt

 

Here you are Matt here's a link to Williamsons http://www.trwilliamson.co.uk/

 

You could also try Craftmaster

 

The water towers at Bewdley on the SVR were recently painted with Williamsons Light Stone and Dark Stone. I know because we had the paint stored in the goods shed before use.
https://www.svrwiki.com/File:Bewdley_water_towers.jpg

 

Hi Matt.

When I ran Phoenix Precision paints Ltd. before retiring, I had produced these colours, matched to the original paint on the Didcot water tower. It was actually called Stone No 1 (Light Stone) and Stone No.3 (Dark Stone). There never was a Stone No.2 but nobody knows why! Phoenix can supply any size tins of these colours. It is best quality coach enamel. By the way, there is no British Standard or RAL colour that exactly matches either of them. Hope this helps.

Bob.

 

There was a stone no.2 - but it is true that you won’t find a structure finished in that colour. Stone no.2 served as undercoat for both no.1 and no.3

 

Thanks. Yes you are quite right! I had totally forgotten that, having been out of the paint business 14 years........and I did the research for the business!! Must be 'an age thing'!!

Bob.

 

Light Stone is BS381C 361 and Dark Stone was BS 381C 363 (on the 1948 chart). The Severn Valley Railways colours are incorrect and appear to be BS4800 04 C 35 and BS4800 08 C35. The nearest colour to Dark Stone on the readily available BS4800 chart is 08 C 37. Don't use RAL because that is German.
Another colour widely used by the GWR on areas likely to get scuffed or see a lot of wear was what they called "Maroon Brown", this was almost certainly BS 381C 445 Venetian Red because this was also extensively used by LMS, LNER and SR

 

Sorry to disagree. The GWR Stone No 1 and Stone No 3 do not match British Standard colours. They were definitely NOT BS colours. As I pointed out earlier, the true GWR Stone colours were found underneath many layers of paint, on the water tower at Didcot station. Also, GWR Maroon Brown was not British Standard Venetian Red which is a Red Oxide colour, and was the colour used, instead of GWR Indian Red, to paint the outside frames of City of Truro before the NRM repainted her in the correct colours. Actually GWR Maroon Brown is even darker than GWR Indian Red - and this is not the same as British Standard Indian Red either. BS Venetian Red was the colour used to paint British Railways wagons. GWR Maroon Brown was a dark reddish brown, and I managed to find a patch on the old disused station buildings near Bristol docks, back in the mid 1970s. In fact, hardly any British railway company colours matched any colours in the British Standards colour charts, and those that did, almost certainly did purely by chance.

Bob

 

An interesting observation about the 'maroon brown'. If all the other major railways used it then it must have served its purpose very well.

 

I made a supposition about Venetian red being the GWR Maroon Brown but I am sure they would have used it at some stage as did BR, but not for freight wagons - that was 446 Red Oxide. I don't dispute what you say about the Stone 1 or 3, before the BSI came into being paint was mixed from a recipe and was intended to match a sample on a card so the paint that you found could have been applied anytime in the companies history. The standards were created for the the benefit of big companies like the railways so of course they would have used them to save time, money and to achieve a recognisable company image. I have also recovered many paint samples - although not from ex GWR and I have always been able to identify them.

 

The original poster might wish to check sources with the the GWSR , given that they may well have used a fair quantity of both at Broadway in the recent past.

 

Hi All,

Thanks for all your replies. I now have some paint for my needs.
Once again thanks
Matt

 

Re. the GWR colours and BS Colours; I came across this info on the website of a graphics design and printing company, which may shed some light on the subject (link below):

"Published in 1930, BS381 was the BSI's first colour standard. It did not duplicate the work of the British Colour Council, as it fulfilled a very different purpose to the BCC's work. In fact BS381 was not a co-ordinated range of colours at all but rather a collection of individually specified colours; used for camouflage, identification, signalling and coding systems; by the armed forces and other government departments, public bodies and industry."
http://cpwstonehouse.com/colour-systems-part-2-british-standard-colours/

And some additional info on a later and comprehensive standard range of colours for the building industry, from the website of a New Zealand paint manufacturer (link below). Regarding the history of BS colour specifications, it says:

"The development of a range of standard colours goes back to 1930 when the British Standards Institution realised there was a need for standardised colours. In 1945 it produced a leaflet entitled “Flat Colours for Wall Decoration.” This showed samples of the standard range of that time – ten pastel colours – and was referred to as BS381 WD. In 1955 appeared the first comprehensive range of standard colours for the building industry, known as BS2660."
https://www.resene.co.nz/archspec/archmemo/arch03.htm

Assuming that the above information is correct, I'd have thought that the Great Western would have established their own standards for Stone Nos. 1 & 3 well before 1930, let alone before 1945 - and clearly before the introduction of BS2660!

Of course, this is not to say that Great Western colours do not match BS standard colours; but I suspect that, if they do, it's either a fluke, or just possibly that the people who drew up the standard thought that a particular GWR colour was a useful one, and made the standard match the existing paint.

With best regards,

John

Afterthought - which I should have cottoned onto sooner; it is, of course, possible that when the relevant BS for colours was launched, either the GWR or BR(W) decided to switch to the nearest ones to the original shades, to simplify ordering paint and possibly get it for a lower price. Mind you, if what I've read about the GWR is anything to go by, they were not noted for their willingness to march to the beat of anyone else's drum . . .

 

You have remember that way back when a long time ago, before these standards came into being paint had to be mixed by the user to a recipe on site and presumably to match a sample card. This would have been an expensive and time consuming part of the job of painting things that were supposed to comply with a corporate image and all look the same colour. The introduction of these standards would have saved the railways a considerable amount of time and money which would have been a big help in the 1930s depression.
If you look at and compare the different standards you will notice to a large extent they copy each other - but not exactly; by that I mean that for any colour in any standard there is another colour in another standard that is an equivalent but not an exact copy. When the standards were first conceived I think it likely that the committee would have copied the colours of the time that large concerns like the railways, military, Home Office etc would have used receptively and would have wanted to standardise to get consistency.
BS381C is of course used for identifying things like pipe colours but not exclusively, these colours were also used for other things as well such for painting post and phone boxes and for BR class 87s - the names of the colours given by the standards commitee often give a clue to their intended use, eg. Rail Blue or Post Office Red, or even Light Stone and Dark Stone of the 1931 and 1948 charts. BS2660 was also for mixed use: it's colours were used for railway buildings, locomotives and rolling stock and some of it's colours may well have been interchangeable with BS381C because some of the colours were very similar, or equivalent as I said previously. The same is true of the more recent BS4800.
The GWR may not have liked "marching to the beat of somebody elses drum" but they weren't stupid.
By the way there is a daft and pointless article in this months Steam Railway magazine about the Crimson Lake used by the LMS. Basically it is saying there are different shades of Crimson, well fancy that.

 

I meant repetitively not receptively.