GWSR General Discussion and Operations

It was on the Facebook page initially but by the time I'd gone back to copy it, it had gone!

 

I think it's a good idea. BR Blue is very much part of preservation.
We need an intercity set somewhere next!

 

Well, blue & grey can now be seen as a vintage livery and hence a legitimate choice. We should perhaps be grateful that GWSR was outside the NSE area, so you will hopefully be spared any proposals to use that livery!

I believe that GWSR is also re-painting more coaches into blood & custard livery, so there is going to be considerable variety of carriage colours. Is the plan to try to keep coach sets to one livery, or to accept trains of mixed colours?

Although not myself a big diesel fan, I visited the GWSR diesel gala on Sunday and enjoyed the frequent train service up and down the line. The event seemed well organized and managed, with good time-keeping through the day. The only down-side was the long waits at passing places, particularly northbound at Winchcombe and Toddington, but I assume that was necessary because of the uneven section lengths and to provide some contingency.

I was surprised by the fairly light train loadings on Sunday. Perhaps more folk attended on Friday & Saturday? Some potential attendees may of course be away on summer holidays - it is unusual to stage galas in July. I also wondered whether, in the absence of any Deltics and absence of any Western Region Hydraulics, the line-up was not sufficiently appealing to some diesel fans?

Anyway, I hope the weekend's takings were sufficient to break even and cover costs.

 

The aim, according to the C&W blog, is a policy decision to phase out the maroon livery, which weathers far more poorly compared to chocolate and cream or blood and custard. Its a fair point, given how often one sees rather tatty-looking Mk1s in maroon at any number of railways.

 

Yes, set 1 (7) will remain chocolate and cream, although it's been a bit mixed recently due to shuffling of coach types. Set 2 (7) which was maroon is going all crimson and cream - we're well on the way with that, 4 done, 2 more in the works to be complete by the end of the year. The third set (between 5 and 7) will still aim to be chocolate and cream, but will probably end up a little mixed most of the time, and the fourth set blue and grey - I'd like us to try and marshal any remaining maroon coaches into that set too while we have a couple in blue & grey, but that will depend on other practicalities of course.

 

That rationale for reducing the use of maroon livery makes a lot of sense, and I don't in general have a problem with it. One point/query, though: maroon livery was a historical artifact, in wide use on coaches, one of some duration. It would be nice if there were some examples of it on actual coaches on heritage line(s). Will there be any coaches painted in maroon on the GWSR, to preserve that history? (Yes, yes, I know there are many pre-grouping engine liveries which are not now extant in the vintage world; the maroon coaches were very widespread, though.)

 

It is currently planned to phase maroon out, but I suspect it'll be some time before the last one disappears, and by the time that comes to pass who knows, maybe plans will change again! It would be nice to have a rake of each livery, but the challenge is then keeping rakes in uniform colours. Yes I know they often all got mixed up, but in the rose-tinted world we recreate on heritage railways, it looks a lot better if they're not all jumbled up.