Haresnape is informative, but his principal failing is that for colour comparison and specification purposes, he relies on back-referencing Ernest F Carter's book Britain's Railway Liveries, Harold Starke Ltd 1952 and 2nd ed 1963, and its included colour chart, which uses Carter's unique reference numbering. Few people will have a copy of that while the colour chips will have the potential to change over time and are high gloss, and Carter does not include all of the colours anyway.jwealleans wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:27 am It's a case of what knowledge is available at the time, like all these things. These days we're thoroughly spoilt by the Internet, although there's as much duff information on that as anywhere else. At least it's readily to hand and you can filter through what you think is reliable and what is not.
To my knowledge the authoritative work on LNER liveries of all sorts is still the Brian Haresnape book from about 1980.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Railway-Liveri ... 0711013462
Certain drawings of carriage livery details are copied from Nick Campling's/David Jenkinson's original Historic Carriage Drawings, also published by Ian Allan. The MRC published a couple of articles detailing LNER locomotive liveries, the first by Nick Campling (LNER Society) in October 1967 and the second by Robert E Hillard (HMRS) in May and June 1979.
The LNER Society's original intention was to produce a livery register but the work relied on the contributions of individuals; the available source material was distributed but to my understanding never re-collated.
As of today, Mike Trice has probably done the most research on coaching stock, Peter Tatlow has provided livery information in his Wagons series; and I am still assimilating information regarding the painting of buildings and structures. Chris Stapleton at Precision Paints has also undertaken or has access to sufficient research to reproduce the model paints.
The problem remains of relating described colours to actual published specifications such as British Standards, and then understanding the methods of their application. One fact I do know is that most paint was prepared at The Plant, under the direction of the Chief Chemist, and distributed to the point of use, which suggest greater consistency of colour if not in the local methods of application.