BR crimson & cream, aka blood & custard (again) !

Has anyone ever suggested the blood was crimson? They were both vile, cheap colours. My father, who worked for a paint manufacturer, thought the red was loaded with heamatite to give maximum opacity with a single coat repaint. The custard looked like the stuff our school dinner ladies knocked up.

Ken.

Ken,

Well, several ready-to-run coach manufacturers and model paint producers seem to think so. Until very recently, it has been impossible to purchase either coaches or paint which in any way resembles the subject of the Back Track photo.

When it was dirty, perhaps - but look at the photo in Back Track; that's a *very* pale cream.

Regards, John Isherwood.

"cctransuk" wrote

Always difficult to rely on old colour photos, particularly those reproduced in magazines. The photo emulsions of the time were unreliable, and the scanning and other processes used in the magazine printing industry can distort the colour.

That's not to say that the 'blood' in 'blood & custard' was not crimson.

John.

In message , Ken Parkes writes

You mean that lumpy, insipid forerunner of superglue. Sounds about right..

I remember the colour well, I rode in those carriages many times. It was more of a tomato colour - if that's crimson, so be it. The "custard" is harder to characterise, but it was darker than GWR cream (which, BTW, is often too dark on models.) Besides, the carriages were not kept as clean as GWR kept theirs, so what with rain making a mucky sludge of the dust and smoke on the sides, the colours varied a lot.

"If it looks right, it is right."

The message from Roy contains these words:

You had _lumps_?? Now when I was a lad...

I think the official BR designation was "carmine and cream". The BR Board had tried some other colour schemes, notably the ex-LNWR "plum and spilt milk" but, in the austere post-war environment there was a shortage of painters properly capable of carrying out elaborate lining schemes, and there was also a shortage of cleaners. The Board decided that they should not show any leaning to any of the "Big Four" and hence a new coaching livery - carmine and cream - and express engines in blue rather than black, crimson or green.

Hope this helps, David Costigan

Then it's wrong John. It approached the tone, but lacked the richness, of B'ham Corporation's public transport. It was "our" cream that made BR's look so awful.

Ken.

"David Costigan" wrote

The Board decided that they should

Ah yes, something similar to LNER blue and using standard LNER black & white lining!!! ;-)

John.

Did the BR "Blood & Custard" livery come before the BR Maroon livery then ? Just wondered what the time line was regarding the liveries following nationalisation ?

Cheers

Malcolm

"Malcolm" wrote

Blood & Custard [1] for coaching stock was superceded by maroon [2] from c.1957 onwards, and that in turn by blue & grey [3] from c.1965 onwards.

[1] - crimson only for secondary stock [2] - green for most dmus & emus [3] - blue only for suburban stock, dmus & emus.

John.

Further to John's answer to the question about the dates for coach livery changes, the switch from carmine and cream to maroon (very similar to the old LMS style, but less ornately lined out) coincided with the Western Region being given approval to return some coaching stock to chocolate and cream livery for use on WR named expresses. Paddington did this for such as the "Cornish Riviera" and the "Bristolian", and then came up with names which had not - as far as I am aware - ever been used before ("The Inter-City" springs to mind). Maybe they had lots of chocolate and cream paint left over from pre-1948!!

David Costigan

"David Costigan" wrote

I didn't want to complicate matters by including the odd regional variation, but as you've (quite rightly) introduced the concept, it should be pointed out that BR(SR) began painting some of their coaching stock in green livery at the same time. I think this latter variation on 'standard' livery was probably saw more widespread use than the WR's chocolate & cream.

Both the WR & SR liveries could be seen on regional workings, and I recall seeing choc/cream coaches at Leeds and SR green at York in the early 60s.

John.

John,

I can recall seeing coaching stock in all colours and shades at the sidings in Welwyn Garden City when I was a child in the mid to late

60's, presumably as stock got all mixed up and slowly re-painted in the blue / grey.

The only reason I was asking was that we are modelling the GWR in the late 50's - early 60's and note that some painier tanks (farish) are available in BR black as well as GWR green, and wondered if the BR maroon stock would of ever been seen behind a black painier on the WR in that era, or would blood and custard stock be more in keeping, or stick with GWR cream and chocolate ??

Cheers

Malcolm

"Malcolm" wrote

I'd have thought that maroon stock would be the most likely when hauled by

*either* black or green BR liveried panniers during your period. Chock/cream stock was pretty much limited to main line expresses, whilst local trains would have been crimson (rather than crimson & cream) and maroon from c. 1957 onwards, although it would have taken some time for all secondary use coaches to get repainted into maroon.

John.

Chocolate and cream coaches were used on the Devonian from Bradford Forster Square and Leeds City to Torquay and Paignton; SR green ones were sometimes seen on the Newcastle to Bournemouth trains.

My alternate routes from Bradford to Oxford in the early 1960s:

- Steam-hauled Devonian to B'ham New Street, hike across to Snow Hill, Western-hauled train to Banbury, DMU to Oxford.

- DMU from Bfd Exchange to Penistone, Woodhead electric to Sheffield, steam-hauled Newcastle/York-Bournemouth train to Oxford.

Looking at a copy of British Standard 381C 'Colours for Specific Purposes', 1964, there is no colour therein called 'carmine', but colour No.540 is called 'crimson'. This is quite a dark red, not really a fresh blood colour. Of course, BR might not have used a B.S. Std. colour. If anyone has access to the Munsell Colour System, the reference there is: 5R

2.5/12. Interestingly, in Australian Std. 2700-1985, 'Colour Standards for General Purposes', there is a colour No.R15 'Crimson', which is much redder than the B.S. Crimson, and to my eye, much closer to fresh blood colour. B.S. 381C has colour No.352, 'Pale Cream', rather yellowish, but nothing just called 'cream'. No 352's Munsell Ref. is 4Y 8/5. A.S. 2700 has Y34 Cream, lighter than No.352. Obviously, B.R. would not have used A.S. 2700 colours, but it interesting to do these comparisons. One man's Crimson is obviously not another man's Crimson! And ditto for Cream! Regards,

Bill.

"MartinS" wrote

'The Devonian' went through my home town station (Normanton in West Yorkshire). The northbound train stopped there at a little after 6pm in the evenings, whilst the morning southbound train didn't stop for some reason. I believed the NER & the WR provided a rake of coaches each for this service, and clearly only the WR rake was choc/cream.

John.

From my admittedly vague(- my mother tells me that I used to hide upon the approach of steam engines) memories of the early part of the 1960s on the former GWR, most passenger stock in the sort of passenger trains that might be hauled by a pannier would have been in blood and custard or maroon/plain crimson. I only remember seeing clean 'chocolate and cream' on the Pembroke Coast Express, whch used to hurtle past my aunt's pub in Burry Port. There may have been surviving GWR (not BR) liveried ex-GWR stock, but even that was largely maroon. Don't forget that, by the early 1960s, a lot of secondary WR services used displaced LMS and LNER stock from the areas which had succumbed to dieselisation. I have vivid memories of those seat-back pictures illustrating various 'exotic' East Coast' resorts. Brian