Liveries!

Yes, they are good machines, so is a Jinty, designed to do the same type of work

 

Although notable that while the Austerity 2-8-0 was effectively a 'Stanier 8F lite', the Jinty was considered as the basis of the Austerity shunter but passed over in favour of the Hunslet 50550 design.

Sorry, in typical Nat Pres fashion every locomotive thread descends into froth about livery while the livery thread ends up discussing locomotives...

 

You learn something new every day. This GWR livery was new to me. Beautiful models by the way! (click at the pictures for full size)

https://www.leemarshmodelco.com/col...h4-page-updated-06-02-17-h4-click-image-above

Knut

 

It stopped being used after about 1894, which is why you rarely see it. The only surviving GWR engine which theoretically could carry it is the Dean Goods in Swindon, although it has a later boiler. Obviously a Dean Goods repaint isn't going to happen, but I think the livery has been applied in preservation to a random industrial.

Sadly, the influence of Wolverhampton and the Armstrongs has been largely forgotten in the GWR story. I think I'd have used up all of my Euromillions win before I even came to the end of my Armstrong newbuild wish list...

 

Before anyone pulls me up on it, which they probably will, I should point out that the preserved Dean Goods dates from 1897!

 

One of the strange things about modern perception of the GWR is that it tends to be considered as only the chocolate box painting and Cyril Freezer branch line terminus. So roughly the accepted history goes “Brunel - North Star - Lord of the Isles - 14xx with auto coach - King”. The whole 19th century standard gauge system might as well not exist; nor even the pre Chocolate and cream part of the twentieth century.

Tom

 

You're forgetting 252... There's certainly enough left to carry significant elements of Wolverhampton livery...

 

Not to mention the perception that it was all ex Broad Gauge instead of (I think) less than half.

 

Enthusiasts' ideas of railway 'history' are often very loco-centric, and I think part of the problem is that there is a clear cut-off point in loco design that begins with Churchward. The schoolboy trainspotters of the 50's and 60's could directly relate the designs they saw with the early works of Churchward, even though those designs had appeared over half a century earlier in the 'olden days', and some of them had been extinct for many years. Anything which dated from before that time, however, was alien in appearance. Consequently the whole pre-Churchward era is viewed as being some murky, distant, foreign land. I think this still holds true today. As Jim says, there is also this perception that it went from a wholly broad gauge to wholly standard gauge railway, which compounds the problem. Other railways perhaps had a slightly more organic development, so their history doesn't get compartmentalized as rigidly. I may be wrong!

As you rightly say, you have these random 'hits' like North Star and the Dean Singles... but what about the rest of the album they were on?​

 

In general model railway manufacturers don't offer much pre-grouping rolling stock (not just GWR but any pre-grouping companies) That must also have an impact on people perceptions of railway history. After all, most of us probably started with a train set when we were children.

 

Another modern perception of the GWR is the regularly quoted 'all GWR locomotives look alike'. Usually said in jest I know, but bar the Dean Goods and a few absorbed tanks everything that survives is the work of one drawing office and just three CMEs, so it shouldn't come as a surprise...

 

You also have early influential writers such as Nock and Tuplin, whose memories went back to when the Saints were new, but not before, and whose work was weighted towards the period they remembered.

Before that you had Ahrons, who did write about the earlier GWR, but I don't think his work ever had the same popular appeal.

 

Ahrons at least has the benefit of being deliberately funny (*) whereas Tuplin is just unintentionally funny

(*) At least the southern volume is - haven’t read the others but I assume his style didn’t change.

Tom

 

Also, I submit, an example of what someone not far from here would call "big Chufferitis" since there were two utterly different design threads from the GWR: the large outside cylinder classes with leading wheels being pure Churchward and Swindon, but by contrast the six wheeled engines being evolutionary developments of classes going back to the Armstrongs and with a strong Wolverhampton pedigree.

 

One of my favourites is the Crow ('a railway bird') contrasted with the Pheasant...

 

Very true, the lineage through the Dean Goods to the 94xx and 2251s all starts with George Armstrong at Wolverhampton.

 

And whatever pre-grouping rolling stock they do offer mostly tend to be locomotive classes where examples lasted into BR days - Terriers, J72s, Churchward engines, etc.

 

I come across a postcard on Ebay showing this fantastic good looking and decorated tank engine!
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/wREAAOSwPc9W0shR/s-l1600.jpg

Knut

 

Thanks Knut. London Tilbury & Southend Railway.. The loco is now in a museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LT&SR_79_Class

Looks like King George V and Queen Mary on the front running-board. Probably celebrating the King's coronation in 1911.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_V#King_and_emperor

 

I didn`t know it was preserved. Thanks for mention that bluetrain!

Knut