6023 to become 6015

The thought occurs Jamie, if it is indeed Green in that photo with the double chimney (as you would assume), it doesn't mean it didn't carry blue previously, perhaps even just prior to entering the works to get the double chimney ?.

 

I do not know about 6015 but I can say that 6000 was painted BR blue twice before its was painted BR green. How do I know? In 1982 I was part of a small team that fully repainted 6000 at Hereford. We rubbed down a small area of one cabside back to bare metal, from the metal outwards were one GWR green, two BR blues, then seven BR greens. Each finish colour was lined out. Incidently none of the BR greens matched each other at all!

I cannot believe that was 31 yrs ago.

 

I would agree absolutely, there is every chance that the loco carried blue before that photo was taken.

 

1 repaint in 20+ years under private ownership, then 9 mis-matching repaints in 15 years.. thats a government organisation for you.
Nothing changes.. I bet if you did the same on a Class 47 you'd find the same, yet if you look at class 92's built on the cusp of privatisation.. in 20 years they are still in BR railfreight livery.

 

Mind you, to take up a point made on an earlier posting, the excessive repainting under BR must have been fairly selective. There's a picture of pannier tank 4628 in Dick Riley's book "Great Western Album" taken as late as 1963, which still says "GWR" on the side of the tanks. I wonder i many otehr locos were still running in pre-nationalisation liveries as late as this.

 

And at the other extreme, reading through LSWR locomotive history seemed to give an average of about 30 months between locomotive repaints over quite a long period from the late nineteenth century up to grouping. So I don't think you can necessarily make a "private good / public bad" argument over this. With regard class 92s having the same finish for 20-odd years: maybe part of that is due to better quality paints now than 50 years ago. It's also undeniably true that air quality is better now which again would lead to slower degradation than in the ashy, sulphurous atmosphere of a typical steam shed.

Tom

 

ound:ound: Brilliant, that's the coffee spilt over the keyboard.:lol: I thought it was only Mrs.V who was capable of one liners like that. Many thanks, you've given an old man a good laugh to start the day:thumb:

 

I don't know that I'd want to draw exactly that conclusion. What that exercise tells you is the number of coats since the last time that part of the locomotive was down to bare metal, which might not be the same as brand new. In that context wouldn't the cab side windows have had welded over covers during the war? It doesn't seem impossible that cab sides were completely stripped or even replaced when the windows were reinstated.