Computer Coloured Monochrome

[Darwin4975]

No prizes for identifying this location. The celebrated high speed A3, Papyrus in its late double chimney form is heading freight from the north towards Edinburgh in 1960.

[S.A.C. Martin]

The only problem - and it is the only problem for me - is that the coloured look doesn't lend itself to the shine of metalwork. The boiler colour here looks very flat where as relatively clean loco, you'd imagine Papyrus might look more like this:



From this website here, credit and copyright (I assume) is Fotorus.

That's not a criticism of your work, I think it brings a wonderful flavour of reality to B&W photographs but it does seem to be a bit of the medium's achilles heel.

Although - may I say - ignoring that, the shot itself and the colour of the bridge behind, contrasted with the locomotive in front…looks spectacular, a wonderful shot. Worthy of the front cover of a book.

[Darwin4975]

A reasonable comment if the pictures were comparable but St Simon was obviously very clean and shining brightly in the sunshine with a very reflective boiler top. The black and white original of Papyrus shows the boiler to be fairly uniform in density. I suspect that the engine was actually rather dirty and didn't look as quite green as this. The smokebox has had some cleaning attention in recent times perhaps which helps to give the impression that the engine was clean overall. The top of the boiler loses its green colour more quickly than the sides and would have looked more brown. Thanks for your comment, it helps keep one on one's toes. I'll revisit this one and see if it can be made more natural as a dirty green A3.

[Albergman]

Congratulations on another winner.

As I've said before I grew up in Dunfermline just a couple of miles north of this magnificent bridge and, in fact, I could see the tops of the arches from my bedroom window! Many a time we crossed it en route to visit Granny in Leith.

Now, my only immediate reaction to this shot is that the steelwork isn't red enough ... maybe a bit too washed out??

Granted my memories of this structure are ancient now but some things stay with you. Do you have any period pictures to check against ... I could well be wrong on this!

Anyway, thanks for the rekindled memories of this wonderful bridge and the days of crossing it behind a steam engine ... and tossing ha'pennies out the window while making a wish.

Frank

[S.A.C. Martin]

A reasonable comment if the pictures were comparable but St Simon was obviously very clean and shining brightly in the sunshine with a very reflective boiler top. The black and white original of Papyrus shows the boiler to be fairly uniform in density. I suspect that the engine was actually rather dirty and didn't look as quite green as this. The smokebox has had some cleaning attention in recent times perhaps which helps to give the impression that the engine was clean overall. The top of the boiler loses its green colour more quickly than the sides and would have looked more brown. Thanks for your comment, it helps keep one on one's toes. I'll revisit this one and see if it can be made more natural as a dirty green A3.

Fair enough, my apologies.

[Spamcan81]

Have enjoyed this thread very much. Some of the images have the appearance, to me, of a hand tinted post card whilst others are much nearer the "real thing." I've collected colour slides over the years and I would say that some of the CCM stuff on here is much better. Early colour emulsions vary widely in how they record colour and to judge CCM against those in terms of accuracy is an unfair comparison in my opinion. No colour image will be 100% accurate anyway and in this respect CCM is no different. Keep up the good work.

[Darwin4975]

It's difficult (verging on impossible) to darken the metalwork of the bridge as the negative density isn't high. The sun was shining and probably getting lower in the sky so there will have been a lot of reflection making the bridge light in colour. Grime is a different matter and Papyrus has been adjusted accordingly. Lining out on the boiler doesn't show in the original which again suggests she was less than pristine.

-However she was truly spotless in comparison with classmate Royal Lancer at Kings Cross in June 1947. At that time engine cleaners had become an extinct breed and the unlined wartime black (glossy when freshly painted) is hidden here beneath many layers of filth. Even the new 1946 number (applied on rebuilding from A1 to A3 in October 1946) is already looking quite grubby.

At her next shopping in April 1948 Royal Lancer took on the final BR identity of No 60107.

(Revised post)

[PGBerrie]

I've just discovered this thread and find it very interesting. My first impressions are that CCM is just the computer aided version of the lost art of colour retouching of photographs and a lot of them do give this slightly unreal impression. But 62496 Glen Loy, 2404 Jeannie Deans and 4472 at Gleneagles really have the look of real colour photographs. I've tried to put my finger on it and come to the conclusion that many of the images are too flat - the colour saturation is not quite right. The black engines are sometime too grey, the reds on the buffers sometimes too pale. In some cases where I might expect grey dirt on the buffers, I'm getting a faded red.

Still on the whole I enjoyed the images and am looking forward to more.

Peter

[Darwin4975]

One feels obliged to answer, especially when the comment is clearly genuine. As I've said all along, guarantees aren't on offer, -just an interpretation of what the scene may have looked like at the time.
[quote="PGBerrie" -The black engines are sometimes too grey].
This does surprise as I have found that to leave any grey pixels untouched is asking for trouble and shows in the finished result. To avoid any hint of greyness, black engines are always given a wash of brown to resemble the oily dirt that I remember seeing on them, sometimes mixed in with a degree of rust (a redder brown -though the rust only tended to be a common feature right at the end of steam, and pictures dating from this period are not in my sphere of activity.
[quote="PGBerrie" -the reds on the buffers sometimes too pale. In some cases where I might expect grey dirt on the buffers, I'm getting a faded red.]
Red is a real problem colour in this type of activity. Many otherwise lovely negatives (eg. clean engines in bright sunshine) are non-starters because the red bufferbeam shows up as very light grey or even white on the black & white positive -which is always the starting point on the computer screen. Lack of pixels makes it impossible to produce a scarlet and the best that can be expected is a light pink, which looks terrible.
I absolutely agree regarding the dirt on the bufferbeam. (You would have also been right to say that the inevitable chipped paint should be showing up too.) Dirt always gathered around the drawhook assembly and did so very quickly after release to traffic for 99% of ex-works locos. It should be visible, but unfortunately the dirt rarely shows itself as distinct from paint, on the negative. Chipped paint could be properly shown, again, so long as it shows itself on the computer screen and this depends very much on the quality of the negative and how close the front/rear of the engine was to the camera.
Only what can be seen on the screen can be treated. The picture of Papyrus for example shows no trace of lining on the boiler, presumably as the grime was getting in the way. It would not be possible to put the lining where we all know it should be, as there needs to be a clear visible boundary. The cab lining however shows up well.
In my experience the perfect negative for this type of work is a very rare thing indeed. Given that one is working with a less than perfect negative one therefore has to expect a degree of imperfection in the result. Despite this, I think that a good CCM will generally improve on the average 1960s colour transparency (such as that of St. Simon.)

A clean D49 ready for posting next time.

[Iron Duke]

Personally I find these to be really good and offer an insight into how things "may" have looked.

How many people when asked to imagine the colour red for instance, can then portray an exact shade in their minds eye?
I cannot picture in my mind the exact shade of any locomotive, coach etc, be it green, blue, or any other colour around at the time.
Everyone (I assume) sees the world in a slightly different way to everyone else. Light and shade also affects the way we see things.

Early colour prints in books and magazines during the 30's, 40's, 50's 60's & even later all varied due to the quality of the printing technology around at the time. When I saw a green engine depicted in say for instance "Trains Illustrated Annual" I did not think oh! the colours are not right, I just thought they were an enhancement on other black & white ones.

I would like to see more of this sort of thing so that I can imagine (in my minds eye) what things "may" have looked like.

Only my own personal opinion.

ID

[Darwin4975]

No member of this forum is likely to remember the D49/3s as there were only six of them and the sub class became extinct before WW2. One of Gresley’s less successful experiments, the oscillating cam valve gear is given away by the lever protruding from the outside cylinders.

This picture appears in the latest issue of Back Track (June 2014, -unfortunately spoiled by being reproduced on blue tinted paper) along with an article describing the inauspicious history of the D49/3s. They were all rebuilt as standard piston valve locomotives when due for cylinder renewal in the late 1930s and all six existed in original form for less than 10 years.

The negative on which this picture is based was taken using orthochromatic film and so the bufferbeam shows up darkly on the positive image, and a proper deep red becomes possible. Inverness-shire was the last locomotive to come out of Darlington works with its number on the tender and is seen here at Glasgow Eastfield in 1928, when almost new.

[Darwin4975]

A pair of Great Eastern 4-4-0s feature in this 1930s scene. I have no information regarding the location. Perhaps someone in the forum can provide it. The bricks in the wall behind had to be given individual treatment or the cement would have shown up as red.

[Darryl Tooley]

The location is Cambridge, sometime between December 1933 when D15 8867 became a D15/2 (superheater, extended smokebox) and April 1936, when D13 8020 was withdrawn.

D

[giner]

Yes, a lot of buildings in the Cambridge area are built with the local brick, which is a white to pinkish/yellowish white colour - a lot of chalk in the soil. The cement would have been the usual 3:1 sand to mortar mix.

[jwealleans]

It's the north end bays at Cambridge with the engine shed behind.