Pre War A4 Nameplate Colour

[Tom F]

Morning all

An enquiry. Was it only the Coronation and West Riding A4s that carried red back name plates pre war and the rest had black? I'm looking at 1938 in particular.

[silverlink]

Hi Tom,
Locos with red background from around 1938 were
2509/10/11/12, 4488/89/90/91/92/95/96
From 1939
4469/98/99/4500 (including stainless no's & letters
Info comes from RCTS LNER Locomotives Part 2A
Cheers
Ian H

[60800]

Sorry I was a bit off on the p.m Tom, but at least my hunch about 2509 was correct

[Tom F]

Hi Tom,
Locos with red background from around 1938 were
2509/10/11/12, 4488/89/90/91/92/95/96
From 1939
4469/98/99/4500 (including stainless no's & letters
Info comes from RCTS LNER Locomotives Part 2A
Cheers
Ian H

Marvelous, thank you Ian...so all four of the original quartet had red plates in 1938. Interesting. Were these in Brass or Chrome I wonder?

Don't worry Joe, you were right indeed.

[mick b]

Coronation Locos Chrome I havent checked the others at mo

[Tom F]

Coronation Locos Chrome I havent checked the others at mo

I'm guessing the others would be Brass and Black Backed. As for the original Quartet with red name plates, I'm not sure if they would be Brass or Chrome.

[Tom F]

Now I've found my RCTS 2A book, it appears the quartet did indeed have chrome plated name plates, and this included the West Riding two also.

[silverlink]

Although you were asking about the Coronation in the 30's I'm sure some of these locos had brass nameplates in the 50's/60's. I have a photos somewhere of Silver Link & Quicksilver in Brass.
Ian H

[Tom F]

Further to this post from a year ago.

I've now found colour photos/footage of three bird name A4s with red nameplates, Herring Gull, Kingfisher and Wild Swan (1938/1939). If these three had red plates...who is to say more didn't?

[S.A.C. Martin]

I'm of the opinion far more locomotives on the LNER carried red nameplates than we're led to believe. Even looking at the apple green Thompson A2/3s from the 40s, I notice no.500 should have red backed nameplates too…! It's a surprising discovery of sorts and I'm not sure researchers of years present really paid much attention to the colours used on nameplates.

[Tom F]

I've just posted on this subject in your thread on RMweb Si.
If you look at a lot of B&W photos, I'm noticing the A4 nameplates looking far lighter than the Black Smokebox... I think Guillemot is a good example. However others in colour still appear black, for example Sparrow Hawk (however due to it's size it's somewhat hard to tell)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/swift-val ... 0/sizes/z/

[Seagull]

One thing to bear in mind when looking at black and white photos is that the reflective qualities of paint vary quite a lot and also that different paints weather in different ways.

I am on ship which uses modern colour matched paints. The decks, depending on where they are, use two different types of green paint.
When new they are the same shade but their reflective qualities are different so at an angle one looks darker than the other sometimes.

After a period of time the apparently darker one weathers and goes from being a medium dark green to being light mossy green.
It's reflective quaility falls off also, so at some angles it even starts to look almost white. The other green is much more resistant to weathering and loses it's colour more slowly, also it's reflective qualities change slowly as it weathers.

The smokeboxes on most locos would have been painted I guess with a heat resistant black - possibly oil black which would use carbon black as the pigment (colour). This would eventually change to a dark slate grey as it weathers, plus the addition of soot/grime.

The name plates would have used a high quality black enamel. This would keep its colour better than the smokebox and the enamel would stay shiny and thus much more reflective until the pigmentation started to fail, probably taking several years to weather down.

At some angles the nameplates would reflect much more light than the smokebox and probably appear to be lighter (especially to a camera) even though to a live observer they would appear darker.

Alan

[Tom F]

Hi Alan, that is very interesting.

I think on that case, if I only have a B&W photo to go from, I will retain the nameplate Black.

[silverfox]

Bear in mind that there were two types of B+W film in use IIRC up to about 1955/6 Pan Chromtic and Ortho. Ortho then seemd to die a death, i dont know why!
Depending on what film was used it had a pronounced effect on the picture
Ortho, i think, if used with a A4 as subject made the blue a lot lighter and showed up the dirt around the boiler bands more. I think it also made red darker, as per some shots of LT Trolleybuses i have seen
Perhap David (Darwin) my be able to explain it more fully, so it really needs a colour pic to confirm what was used at the time

[LNER4479]

Tom,

Just found this from the 1938 RO volume you have lent me [p.336]...

"4494 came off plant 21/9/38 painted blue, so completing the repainting of the A4's.... Both 4494 and 4902, which has recently received a light repair, have the background of their nameplates painted light red. Two months before, 4488/91 had their nameplates similarly treated, and this touch of red provided a pleasing contrast to the otherwise unbroken stretch of blue, in addition to improving the legibility of the chromium nameplates".

Perhaps a 'policy decision' from late 1938 onwards?