Liveries!

Interesting page, thanks for the link Tom!

Actually I think a Bulleid Pacific doesn`t look bad in this livery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/northernblue109/27879099533/in/album-72157626276645251/

Knut

 

That looks fantastic, I'd love to see it done for real one day.

 

I wonder what locos would look like with access to modern automotive paint tech.

Pearlescent metallic blue on an A4?

 

No. The logo isn't large enough, and it should have wrap-around yellow ends. No doubt someone will have imaged it

 

I’m sure I’ve seen that, but couldn’t find it. There used to be a fotopic fictions liveries site with it, until fotopic’s demise.

Tom

 

My favourite on there was a Small Prairie in First Great Western livery. I thought it quite suited it, except for the giant First group F-in-circle logo on the smokebox door!



Shame the site disappeared.

 

Rather fetching, though without compliant LED lighting, oughtn't the front to be yellow?

 

Eww! To be honest, I don't think most modern liveries are particularly great anyway!

 

I come upon this picture from a book on sale on Ebay showing a Midland Railway livery that was new for me, light green with brass 'decorations' .Beautiful!




Knut

 

Yeah, I believe a lot of locos were painted green in the early days of railways because there was a belief that the colour green was less harmful on the human eye!

 

In the very earliest days of railways*, there wasn't quite the colour pallet which came with the development of synthetic pigments.

*No .... I don't remember them!

 

Thanks for posting that. The early Midland green locomotive livery is rarely seen in illustrations. The Midland Rly had used red carriage livery since very early times, but red engine livery followed in the middle 1880s.

It has been said that every major British railway company painted its engines green at one time or another. The London & North Western Rly had green engines in early times, but changed to black in the 1870s.

Although green used to be the most popular colour for locomotives, only a few of the smaller British companies (notably the Highland Rly & Cambrian Rly) used green as a carriage colour prior to 1920. Carriages were almost always red or brown (sometimes with white or cream upper panels) or varnished wood. But the old companies kept to the same colours for decades, whereas our modern train operating companies change their colours every few years!

 

Wasn't the LNWR very nearly two separate railways in it's earlier years? I've a vague recollection that, amongst other things, the relative autonomy of Northern and Southern divisions extended to livery.

 

One of the divisions used red, the other green, I can't remember which was which. They both amalgamated into black in the 1870s. Much better imo!

 

Essentially yes, which stems from that railway’s origins as an amalgamation between the London and Birmingham Railway (with works at Wolverton) and the Grand Junction Railway (Crewe). They merged, but separate traditions, and separate Locomotive Superintendents, carried on for some time.

Hardly unique for the time: the GWR broad gauge (Swindon) and standard gauge (Wolverhampton) were to all intents and purposes independent, and although the titular Loco Supt was the Swindon man, the chap at Wolverhampton had considerable autonomy, i.e. in the Dean / Armstrong era. I think it was only in the early twentieth century that Wolverhampton stopped building locos and became simply a repair shop.

Tom

 

I think I may have mentioned this before. But nothing can improve on Mr Stroudley's "Improved Locomotive Green" when applied correctly as per Boxhill/Stepney and Gladstone........!

 

I don't like it! Sorry, don't like the SECR livery either, too gaudy and over ornate. Pre grouping the LYR and LNWR got it right!

 

Whose Improved Locomotive Green?

 

The LNWR was formed in 1845-6 from four constituent companies. Soon after the merger, Francis Trevithick at Crewe took charge of the previously separate loco fleets of the Grand Junction Rly and Liverpool & Manchester Rly. The loco fleet of the Southern Division (former London & Birmingham Rly) was under the separate charge of James McConnell at Wolverton and that of the North Eastern Division (former Manchester & Birmingham Rly) under John Ramsbottom at Longsight.

This 3-way split continued for some years, with very different locomotive engineering policies in place. But in 1857, Trevithick retired and John Ramsbottom moved to Crewe to take charge of an enlarged Northern Division. Then in 1862, James McConnell resigned after falling-out with the Board and John Ramsbottom became CME for the entire LNWR.

Livery-wise, all the constituents seem to have mostly stuck to green, except that McConnell used dark red on some S Div engines in 1860-2. The Harry Jack RCTS book quotes sources as variously suggesting that the shade of green was" Brunswick Green", "Light Brunswick Green" or "Bright Green", while paint scrapings from an old tender frame suggested it might have been closer to the green of preserved GNR locos. In reality, there are likely to have been variations in the shades used by different works or different manufacturers.

But we are going a long way back in history here. In the mid-1870s, Francis Webb established black as the definitive LNWR engine colour for the next 50 years.

 

In that case, the MGNR livery must keep you up at night!