48624

Well, as one might expect, if everything's going OK no-one will comment! However, I will. I saw and travelled behind 48624 on the GCR at the end of September and I must congratulate the loco's owners on a lovely restoration and superb, historically accurate finish. Even painting a loco isn't cheap so critics, including myself, should bear this in mind. Hopefully, I'll be able to take another trip on the GCR soon. Have a great Christmas.

 

I presume all those who vilified the loco owners for painting her maroon subsequently made large donations for the repaint into their favourite livery…………….. or maybe they didn't.

 

Oh yes they did, large donations of hot air, opinions and internet bandwidth.... all for free!

 

And why should they? They weren't the ones who chose to paint it red the first time.

All this has already produced a mass of comment in the 6233 thread. Is there a point in duplicating it here?

 

But they were full of "advice" for the owners and how wrong they were blah, blah, blah. "Put your money where your mouth is" is very apt in this case IMO.

 

I don't wish to continue this as a duplication of what has been already said on the other thread, but in this specific case:

1 The owners chose to paint the engine the way they did, and to later give it a repaint into black
2 If thiswas done 'due to popular demand', as it were, it would be tantamount to an admission that they got it wrong the first time so the responsibility to repaint was with the owner (I doubt very much this was the case)
3 I tended not to look at this thread while the engine was in red, so I might have missed the appeal to enthusiasts for the funding to allow the repaint. Was there, in fact, such an appeal?

 

In a round about way they probably will fund it, I was on the photo charter for which the loco was given a coat of dirty "gunge"over the red. I don't think the profit from that one two day charter would have raised the £5000 but it did mean that the damaged red livery was at last painted out and the engine is now an attractive one for for other charters with the GCR goods wagons. There have instances where enthusiasts have funded repaints, J15, 4566 and a K&ESR Terrier.

I think this picture says it all, a scene straight out of the early 60s. Would anyone have paid to see this with the loco in red?

 

A beautiful scene that sums up what preservation is (should) be about, recreating the past as authentically as possible. There is nothing there that is wrong. It even has telegraph poles, and no mobile phone masts.

 

We're probably a dying breed, but I'm not the only one on here who can remember 8Fs in BR service and an 8F in red is just WRONG! When I first saw it an old and rather crude expression came to mind: it begins 'Fur coat and...' I'm sure you know the rest!

 

You certainly aren't, I was photographing real steam right up to the bitter end. At the risk of boring everyone with my pictures here's Mr Smith's 8F when no one thought it would survive. apologies for quality but it is a scanned Agfa slide

 

No apologies needed, John. I too was photographing at the time, but shame prevents me from putting any of the shots on here!

 

Back in those days I used several brands of film but liked Agfa best for most subjects. If all my slides came up as well as that one of yours when scanned I'd be delighted. (Most of those that have been done so far are good enough but certainly not all as good as that one.)

 

And I remember the end of steam on the GN with filthy, unkempt, unloved locos leaking, banging and knocking their way along but I'm unsure what these memories have to do with the colour a loco owner wished to paint his loco.

 

Thank you for your comments. There were two problems with Agfa, the grain and the image deterioration over the years. most of mine have faded and taken on a blue cast. I scan them using an Epson V700 flatbed scanner set at 4800 dpi and then use Photoshop CS6 to clean them up. Auto Tone and Colour usually restores the colour balance but removing dust and scratches I do manually. If you use the scanner software to do this it tends to take out rivet detail etc that it reads as dust specks. The grain I reduce to a certain extent with Neat Image plugin but again too much use will take out some detail. It's then a matter of resizing the image and reducing the resolution to print quality 300 dpi. Hope this helps. My only problem now is with the current rate of scanning and time taken I will be 180 years old by the time the job is finished!

 

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No, that isn't true. The LMS livery policy from 1923 was to paint all PASSENGER engines in red, which threw up some anomalies with several small tankies coming out in that livery, as well as the first hundred Horwich Crabs. But from 1928, red was reserved for the bigger express passenger engines only, and all the later Crabs were turned out in lined black, the original hundred repainted similarly at their first repaint. So as goods engines, the 8Fs would never have been red, even if introduced in 1923, and certainly not by 1935 when they actually appeared.

The only variation on black that I'm aware of (many served overseas, so there are possibilities there) is for some army-owned engines at Longmoor, which were blue with red frames and white tyres, plus a host of other modifications, such as Westinghouse air pumps. I can't say that they suited it but, being the army, they were always immaculately clean.

 

Well the other main point is that the LMS's Western Division (i.e. ex-LNWR) weren't keen on crimson lake in the period 1923-1928 and as a result kept as many engines in LNWR black as possible, along with failing to renumber them into the assigned LMS series. Actually the latter point is a bit funny because the LNWR used a "lowest available numbering" system which resulted in new engines being given the lowest available number (and often name associated with that number). whereas the LMS scheme was based on the 1905 Midland renumbering scheme, giving four divisional blocks (Midland, LNWR, LYR and Scottish), and assigned numbers within each block in blocks corresponding to classes, with engines within 1 class being numbered consecutively in order of build date, but the LNWR shceme produced some quite crazy and haphazard numbering!

 

Indeed! Crewe Works was undergoing a major reorganiastion at the time and was able, somehow, to use this as an excuse for retaining black on everything: only a few ex-LNWR types acquired red paintwork. The 'reorganisation' managed to stretch through to 1928, by which time only the Claughtons would be officially red anyway.

 

Let's not forget about 48711. This loco was paired with a lined green Fowler 3500 gallon tender in 1959. The tender was ex-45597 Barbados.

 

Just wanting to add to the discussion as I'm the one to thank for weathering it. The weathering process I use does not damage paintwork in anyway whatsoever. I use water based poster paints - the stuff kids use (and eat)! I believe the paint was damaged after the poster paint had been washed off when the paintwork was polished. I have very successfully weathered many locos before and since with no affect to the paintwork.