Lettering style on tenders

[1H was 2E]

I think it's worth mentioning that sign writing by skilled men was the practice until recent days. On a visit to Wolverton Works around 1968 a signwriter was lettering up a utility van (not just the number but also the dimensions were shown) and he was working as quickly as I could do it with a felt tip pen. Presumably it was realised that this was a more cost effective way than transfers. I think I can remember someone doing loco numbers at Crewe Works on one of my visits, too.
There's circumstantial evidence that all the BRITISH RAILWAYS lettering was signwritten, and it's this; there was a wide gap between the two words and this was to accommodate a crest ( or maybe a totem - the pedant isn't handy) and this was not included because "it wasn't available yet" according to contemporary sources. It would be logical that, if the crest transfers weren't available then the lettering transfers wouldn't be either; and, whilst a signwriter could happily do BRITISH RAILWAYS maybe not a multicolour lion on wheel. Just a thought.....

[73D]

I think it also worth mentioning that even if transfers were used that the artwork for these would still have been hand drawn, but on a drawing board. You could not 'blow-up' type to the sizes used on railway stock and expect it to stay sharp, so the only way to get the quality was to hand lettered it.

[2392]

Having just produced this lettering for a model maker I can categorically say that although the style is 'Gill Sans' it does not match any Gill Sans font that is available and I had to draw it up by hand to get the correct weight and letter shapes.

ex-GW Brunswick green

The Great Western, or British Railways for that matter, never used Brunswick Green. The correct colour is Mid Chrome Green. The SECR though did use Brunswick Green and can be seen on preserved examples.

Fair comment to be exact, though I feel that generally speaking it's better known as Brunswick rather than the correct Mid Chrome Green......

Likewise the LNER/early BR didn't use "Apple Green" rather it was "Grass Green" to quote the late Brian Haresnapes' Railway Liveries - London & North Eastern Railway. The green used just became known as Apple rather than Grass green through I suppose the "grapevine/hear say" usage.........

[73D]

Fair comment to be exact, though I feel that generally speaking it's better known as Brunswick rather than the correct Mid Chrome Green......

I don't think that we should lower standards and use incorrect terminology, after all people use forums like this to find correct information. These things get 'better known', as you say, because erroneous facts get repeated again and again and are not corrected, so lets make a start on getting things right. Taking it a step further; should we start calling locomotives 'trains', as this is what the majority of people seem to know them as?

Sorry for being a bit pedantic, and please don't take all this the wrong way, but I think people should be guided away form using the incorrect Brunswick green when describing GW or BR green.

[2392]

Fair comment to be exact, though I feel that generally speaking it's better known as Brunswick rather than the correct Mid Chrome Green......

I don't think that we should lower standards and use incorrect terminology, after all people use forums like this to find correct information. These things get 'better known', as you say, because erroneous facts get repeated again and again and are not corrected, so lets make a start on getting things right. Taking it a step further; should we start calling locomotives 'trains', as this is what the majority of people seem to know them as?

Sorry for being a bit pedantic, and please don't take all this the wrong way, but I think people should be guided away form using the incorrect Brunswick green when describing GW or BR green.

Ok being pedantic LNER green locomotives were painted Grass Green not Apple Green.

[73D]

Ok being pedantic LNER green locomotives were painted Grass Green not Apple Green.

I completely agree, again the 'apple' prefix seems to have come about post-war and shows the problems of using a colour name which is incorrect. Personally I always use LNER Green, BR Green, etc. to avoid any problems of this sort. This also gets around the fact that in 1956, after research into longer lasting finishes, the formulation of the green used by BR was altered, this gave a slightly darker shade – nearer deep bronze green, which I am led to believe is the name of the colour produced by Willamsons of Ripon, and used by preservationist as the best match available.

Using an actual colour name, such as Brunswick, can lead people in the wrong direction and recently there have been some preserved GWR tanks running around in strange colours that look suspiciously like proper Brunswick green, so presumably they got what they asked for! I have attached a picture of 6695 as an example, the correct colour being on the pannier behind.

[S.A.C. Martin]

LNER Green is two different shades to be precise. The "apple" green came about because of the amount of yellow in Doncaster's shade, Darlington's being more a darker, more blue shade of green.

This is part of the overall mythos of the LNER, and I accept there's probably no official written documentation calling one "apple green", but if people like the late Malcolm Crawley, Tony Wright, Mark Allatt and a few other well known and much respected LNER experts can (and do) use the term "apple green" then I think it's more a question of accepted terminology rather than "standards".

As for the GWR's "mid-chrome green" - I do take your point about Brunswick Green as an incorrect term, but then it's been in use and in railway texts for the last sixty years if not longer.

This is before we get onto the facts about paint, like no one batch alike, different mixtures, different base paints and primers, varnishes and other finishes all affecting the overall shade and that no one person sees the exact same colour as the same shade anyway...

[2392]

Indeed there was a feature many years ago in Backtrack all about the various colours used on engines from pretty well all the British Railways regions. A case in point being the Maroon used on some of the former LMS Duchess/Coronations. Many people said it was a different shade to that, used by the LMS, which in turn was different to the Midland colour too. Thing is the "Test/research" centre at Derby had for some years several panels [and I'm not sure what size] painted with the aforementioned Maroon kept outside so as to see how it "weathered". As things turned out the paint supplier, supplied the Maroon to the same specifications that the Midland had used 25+ years before British Railways were formed......

[john coffin]

Before I came back from the Dark Side, I used to model racing cars. These were the equivalent of 0 Gauge, and it was difficult to reconcile the "true colours" with "scale colour". For instance, Ferrari red, one of the most famous colours in the motor trade, was for many years, not the same every days, since it was mixed by one guy fresh on each day. So when he had a hangover it was one shade, when the sun was bright it was another. They were all similar, but not completely the same.

The other thing that people tend to not understand is the impact of the colour balance of films, and these days digital cameras and the photoshop type programmes using RGB or Cyan colour balance.

Earnest Carter in his book Britain's Railway Liveries first published 1952,
called even the very early GWR green a Deep Brunswick Green, around 1849.
1896 colour called Chrome Green

Great Northern he states post 1886, locos painted a bright almost Grass Green
panelled with a darker shade of the same colour. 1922 colours described as Bright Green.

We are looking at old photos when colour balance was much more varied than now, and also now more importantly, preserved locos with more modern paints.

In 2003 the LNER 4-4-0 Hunt type loco was at Doncaster for the 150 anniversary, and it was the weirdest green I have ever seen, certainly not to my mind an LNER colour of the proper period.

So who knows which is right?
Paul

[1H was 2E]

This thread seems to have partly become a discussion about colour. A few disparate points on that subject.
With regard to correctly naming colours I am personally irritated by loose expressions but perhaps BOTH "Brunswick" and "Chrome" are correct and here's an example of how colour names seem to change. I've owned for many years a preserved bus. The interior colour was called "Tilling's Dark Green" so I asked the original operator for a tin. When I picked it up, the label said "Galleon Green". Same colour, they said, look it's got the same ref code. (Galleon Green was the name used by Ford for the dark green it painted its big cars at the time - some may remember those F and G reg Zephyrs and Zodiacs). Later, I got some more from a supplier, but they said the same colour was now called "British Racing Green". And the references for this called it "B.R. Green". Not sure what this was an abbreviation of.... but later still someone gave me some genuine BR loco green, and it was a very close match.
With regard to colours on preserved locos not being how you remember them, I can suggest two factors. Older paints were mixed on a clear base (often with compounds of heavy metals - chrome green meaning a chromium compound, possibly sulphate??? for instance, now considered unhealthy) but modern "synthetic" paint has a grey base. It's very difficult to compensate for this grey cast. Secondly, green in particular changes colour with exposure to light and air. Some makes go considerably darker (proved drastically you touch up from the same can you used originally!) and another make goes bluer because the yellow element is bleached by sunlight.

[73D]

With regard to correctly naming colours I am personally irritated by loose expressions but perhaps BOTH "Brunswick" and "Chrome" are correct and here's an example of how colour names seem to change.

Maybe this would be fine if a colour was a 'one off' and not used to describe colour variations still in use, such as Brunswick and Mid Chrome. Indeed these can both be seen on locomotives in preservation, which I think most people can see are different greens – Brunswick on SECR locos and Mid Chrome on GWR ones.

Personally I don't think that because incorrect information has appeared in print, then repeated by others, miraculously makes it fact and I think it might be a good idea to try and correct this error, which I have noticed recently some authors are now trying to do.

[john coffin]

I think it is very dangerous to be so pedantic about the names of colours, or indeed the original point of this post, the lettering.

If you say it is "chrome green" or Brunswick" on what are you basing that statement. Do you have access to the original orders placed by the GWR, or say GNR/ LNER , and more importantly, are you able to see the catalogues of colour provided by the paint manufacturers of the time.

Car colours are often used as a reference, since after they stopped being predominantly black, (mass produced anyway) it was a marketing tool, and there were way more cars produced than locomotives. Also when colours became made by companies for sale into the retail market, they had to be named, it was just easier. However. taking BRG, or British Racing Green as an example. The original pre war Sunbeams had one shaded colour, Bentley another, and post war, Vanwall was different from BRM, and also Lotus. Yet all were called BRG.

Much of this is as has been said before, about computerisation and standardisation. So do not just hammer the printed word, unless you show in writing the proof that it is wrong.

Paul

[1H was 2E]

A little more research into the origins of the two names. The main pigment in Chrome Green was one of the chromium oxides, CR2O3. You will see this colour on old chromed parts - for example light fittings. Brunswick Green used a copper compound better known as verdigris (as seen on old copper stuff and some of my central heating pipes). I use the past tense because compounds of neither element would be considered safe to use in paint nowadays. For this reason, it's unlikely that any paint finish on a locomotive to be seen today would have been prepared using these compounds. When these compounds are formed the respective colours are always exactly uniform. However, this obviously does not apply to modern paint. Chrome Green obviously got its name from the element; Brunswick from the anglicised name for the German district where it was originally produced. Verdigris is old French for 'Green of Greece' slightly corrupted; indeed, Grecian Green may be an alternative name for this colour. I will also point out, as a matter of fact, that dichromium trioxide is much lighter than verdigris and, as a matter of my opinion, neither the chrome compound nor modern paint called "chrome green" look like the colour used by the GWR.

[73D]

I think it is very dangerous to be so pedantic about the names of colours, or indeed the original point of this post, the lettering.

If you say it is "chrome green" or Brunswick" on what are you basing that statement. Do you have access to the original orders placed by the GWR, or say GNR/ LNER , and more importantly, are you able to see the catalogues of colour provided by the paint manufacturers of the time.

I hope I'm not giving the impression that definitive colour descriptions should be used, as I am trying to point out that this can be a dangerous practice and colour names should not really be used at all. Plus, as 1H was 2E has pointed out, modern colours with these names arn't necessarily the same as those used years ago.

To get around any misunderstandings I think it is much safer to use more generic terms such as LNER Green, GWR Green - post 1928, BR Green etc.

[john coffin]

Richard, I too am not trying to be too pedantic, in many ways, it is all in the eye of the beholder.

As with the lettering that started this thread, it is difficult to get over to people of the computer age how many of these items were not noted down in anything other than a notebook, and called "gill sans" for instance. But clearly it was designed specifically for LNER usage. That is why it does not match the standardised things that have come over the last 35 years, since the introduction of the IBM computer and also the early Apple.

If you study your art history, and talk to a restorer, they will tell you that the colour used by Da Vinci is different from that used by Van Dyck. Gaugain against Van Gogh. There was little international trade in colours because it depended on what the local maker used as his basic ingredients. So some artists travelled hundreds of miles because they had heard of a particular colour maker.

The railways spec'd their own colours and generally bought from a particular maker, so until the mid 1920's the paint makers were quite small. It was only with the creation of ICI which really meant that colours were given names.

For instance if you look at some modern designers, they talk about scumbling, and use many colours, but if you go back 50 years, scumble really meant a dark colouring to your woodwork. However further research suggests it was a term used also for those early steel carriages which were painted to represent teak.
Ie it is a technique, not a colour.

Interesting to learn all these things, even though as I say to me the preserved 4-4-0 at Doncaster 2003 was definitely not Standard LNER green.

Paul