Early and Late BR Liveries

[coachmann]

Not just on minor routes. I photographed several mainline workings to Llandudno in the spring of 1972 with rakes of very bleached maroon Mk. I coaches. They outnumbered the blue & grey coaches in their respective trains and I wondered if they had come out of winter storage.

This was only a casual observation as I rarely photographed trains at this period, being more into buses.

[rob237]

Which rather begs the question...

Have you had success in 'bleaching' any of your model carriage commissions?
Maroon, or otherwise...

Cheers
Robt P.

[rob237]

Can recall the maroon Derby-Skegness 'Jolly Fisherman' Mk.I rake being used well into the mid/late 70's.
Usually headed by a pair from the Derby Chopper Squad, which was often headboarded!

Cheers
Robt P.

[strang steel]

Which rather begs the question...

Have you had success in 'bleaching' any of your model carriage commissions?
Maroon, or otherwise...

Cheers
Robt P.

What I tend to do is mix a very thin matt white paint, say 1 part paint to 10 parts white spirit.

Then brush it on carriage sides from the point where the roof meets the sides. The mixture will run down in a rather random fashion. Just leave to dry for a few hours, the white spirit will evaporate leaving thin streaky white which I think looks as though the paintwork has been through carriage washers on a regular basis.

Practice on a non essential carriage in order to get the right effect, but it can look quite good with a little experience.

I do the same on goods wagons, except substituting either dark rust and/or dirty black for the white paint. The advantage is that the thin liquid seems to migrate into grooves and corners in the plastic, which is exactly where dirt and grime would accumulate on the real thing.

[coachmann]

Which rather begs the question...Have you had success in 'bleaching' any of your model carriage commissions? Maroon, or otherwise...
Cheers
Robt P.

Sorry I have only just come back on this. No I haven't tried anything to replicate the bleaching. I was referring to the bleaching seen on maroon BR Mk.I coaches but of course it also afflicted the blue and grey coaches as well. It occured mostly on the tumblehome below the windows. I model the early 1950s when things weathered in a different way (I doubt the powerful cleaning fluids that had a disastrous effect on paint were used in those days). The picture below shows the extent to which I've weathered a coach for my layout circa 1954.....

[strang steel]

On a related subject, I have seen a photo from the mid 1950s of an A4 hauled train emerging from a tunnel on the ECML with a named train where all the visible stock is in crimson/cream livery. However, the first vehicle is either a Gresley or Thompson full brake (sorry, I cant find the photo in any books at the moment), and the depth of the cream livery is much narrower than all the carriages following.

It looks quite odd in the photo, which is probably why I remember it.

Were all the ex-LNER full brakes painted in this manner?

[coachmann]

The cream was narrower on the very earliest repaints into blood & custard. I refer to Gresley wooden corridor stock.

[strang steel]

I am resurrecting this thread rather than starting a new one for efficiency sake, because I have been reading Mike Back's excellent articles in Railway Bylines on the subject of Boston loco shed.

Accompanying part 1 of the article in the November magazine is a photo of 61210 entering the station on a Nottingham to Skegness service dated 13th Aug 1965, which must have been one of the last steam hauled summer trains over that route.

Could anyone who has access to the photo please try and confirm (or not) that the fourth carriage of the train is still in crimson and cream livery? I know this is not going to be easy because the signal post obscures most of the vehicle. I would think that Aug 65 is too early for it to be in blue/grey, or it might just be the angle of the light, but it does look a two-tone colour and would be a great photographic of one lasting into the mid 60s in that livery.