Green everywhere

The reason 1125 won't be in NSE livery is that the team have just spent a very long time and money putting it in green. Green is also the livery it was in when it ran on the Mid-Hants railway under BR. So there you are.

 

By the way whats Trolling?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

 

You don't need to be 130 - our president can clearly remember Brighton liveries, and he's only 102...

Seriously, I suspect liveries are probably something of a fashion thing. 1950s/ 1960s liveries seem inordinately popular at the moment, no doubt because there's a generation of people influential in the preservation movement in their 50s / 60s who remember seeing them in their youth and are trying to recreate their childhood. But as memories of that era fade, and the younger generation rise in influence, I'd suspect two things would happen:

- for the modern traction crowd, their nostalgia will be the 70s / 80s and, in due course, the 90s / 00s etc;
- for the steam crowd, all liveries will be beyond memory, and therefore none will predominate

There's also rolling stock to consider: with most lines relying on BR Mk1s, then for realism you need BR liveried steam engines and to paint the carriages in 1950s / 60s liveries; if you have diesels as well then for realism they really need to be green. Whereas if you're lucky enough to have pre-grouping or grouping carriages (such as the SVR, Bluebell etc) then you have more choice in steam engine liveries.

Personally (being too young to remember steam on BR), I find the 1950s / 60s liveries drab, and can't see the attraction of trying to recreate a desolate period in our railway history when the railways were being run into the ground. So I'd choose pre-BR liveries any day. But each to their own.

Tom

 

I'm with you Tom. But it is also about what the customers expect, and early BR seems to be appropriate for them. I'd like to see more steam in pre-nationalisation and pre-grouping liveries, but with most heritage carraiges being ex-BR Mk1s what colour other than BR do you paint them, and if that is the livery, then it makes sense for the locos to be that too. I'd quite like to see a bit more blue and grey, but I know I am in a minority and it looks awful behind a steam engine.

 

Actually after going to the swanage diesel gala there was no green in sight it was mainly blue

 

On the loco front I'd agree.
As far as rolling stock was concerned only the 4Vep was Blue. The other two rakes of Mk1's were our 'A' and 'B' sets which are all green. During Friday and Saturday evenings we had the 'A' set on Beerexs and the Wine & Dine rake [also green] on Bistros.

 

Kwvr class 20 is in coal sector livery and looks positively hellfire the 25 in BR blue is just the bees knees remember its down to the owners and those whom work on them A large percentage of preserved railways are Working museums not just railways so liverys have to fit the stock that is present

 

very surprised at this post everything seems to go in blue these days as far as i can see. i can count on less than 2 hands the number of loco's i personally know of being painted in green in the last ten years but know of dozens and dozens getting painted in br blue/grey/load haul/ etc

 

Green is the dream, blue is pooh!
I must say that most 1st gen diesels do look better in green with a few exceptions. Rats, Hymeks, Dellies look truely awfull in BR blue IMO, peaks, 40s, baby Dellies (not that you'll see one of those in a hurry!), not too bad.

 

I think Blue suits first gen diesels better than what green ever did, If you look at a grimy green diesel it looks disgusting, but if you look at a grimy blue diesel it kind of suits it.

 

Where do these young posters (hardly contributors) keep getting the idea that the 50s and 60s were desolate? If you want desolate on the railways look around you - right now! The basic railway - weeds on the fast lines, platforms half fenced off for economy, restaurant cars all but gone, and delay penalties - it took a tory lawyer to think that nonsense up. Fleets of accountants swapping numbers - but in the annual accounts about 2/6d changes hands -what a farce!

The 50s and 60s saw both post-war resurgence and then the elimination of steam on our railways, Bill Hoole and Ted Hailstone, the real technical rail expertise of C J Allen and O S Nock in the railway press, not keyboard warrior editors who swap around the media trade for magazine positions. It saw modernisation and repairs following the ravages of war - real war that laid waste to vast areas of our country and particularly urban and city centres. Desolate - indeed - No! optimistic, experimental, adventurous - the exact opposite of the "sir knows best" mentality of many an office, college, or business nowadays.

There was, though, also the stupefying complacency of the bowler hatted management classes always willing to blame "the unions" but - they were the management. You want to know where our industry went - look that way.

Thank goodness for today's preservation scene that we were the upcoming baby boomer generation. If sir had always known best an awful lot of locos that were bought for preservation would have been razor blades long ago. And if you don't like green or black - then tough - the paying punters do, qed the WCRC public excursions which are almost 100% BR liveried and sell out almost everywhere with Joe Public as the customer - not the livery warriors.

Those decades on the railways saw the emergence of new modes of power, mass electrification, the introduction of some classes which were as grotesque as they were inefficient "The Fell" for instance - but by God those days were interesting. How would today's diagrammers cope with pickup freights, slip coaches, unbraked coal trains,etc, compared to the part time skeletal operation of clone designs that appear to be populating our railways more and more these days, and which we are told are saturating the network with traffic.

In the latter days, even the BR HST and IC225s were better than the Pendolinos and Voyagers, Javelins etc, provided by the new railway and as for the class 70 - pass the sick bag!
and in the case of preserving a 142 - pass the gas axe! There is usually nothing so right as the liveries classes were born to wear - the two tone Type Four as demonstrated by John, but rail blue introduced nationally in 1963 - the kiss of death to design for almost twenty years until individual managers proved how awful it was, and BR designers of the eighties produced the raspberry ripple - the best Inter-City livery since Gresley's Grey and Blue or Apple Green and Teak.

Desolate 50s and 60s - I would have them back tomorrow.

 

well said Mr Tbird, well said indeed

 

Nice Frank, well said, the 50's and 60's, happy days. Common sense was still alive. :thumb:

I will not get into a livery discussion but the one I've liked in recent times has been GNER. A good company before it was sacrificed. Just my opinion as always.

 

Terrific post. Well said.

 

very good post.

 

Go back to the 1970s and 1980s when most tours had blue and grey stock and pre nationalisation or, in a couple of cases, pre grouping liveries, they were equally well supported, even the ones with Inter City stock. The "authentic" sets we have now are a relatively recent development of the preservation era.
IMHO put the right itinerary and pricing package together and Joe Public will book whether it's BR era livery or not. As long as the train is well presented and clean, I don't think Joe Public is overly concerned as to the actual colour.

 

I grew up in the BR blue era and I personally cannot stand the scheme.

Pre-blue, British Railways (as it was) gave a bit of thought to liveries and you had some of the most dynamic and stylish applications of paint ever put on railway vehicles. Just compare a Deltic, Hymek, Class 26 or 47 in green livery to the 'who cares, just chuck the same thing all over everything' of the blue era.

For me the 'British Rail' blue era symbolises when Britain's railways stopped being cared about by the governments of the day. "We'll just chuck the same style over everything, we'll call it 'corporate image' but the real reason is that making everything look the same means we can save a packet of cash and spend it on other things."

Sorry to the young OP, but IMHO BR blue is the worst livery ever applied to any railway vehicle. THey even managed to choose a particularly hideous shade of blue...

 

What are these? Deltics made of rubber, designed to be used in wet weather?

I know some people call them 'boats', but aligning them with waterproof footwear does seem a little extreme...

 

47s in two tone green, 26s in green with half way up the front yellow panel, 42/43s in maroon with full yellow ends, Deltics in later BR blue - horses for courses!