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Early British Railways Liveries

 

Locomotive liveries were announced in early 1948. It was announced by the Railway Executive that there would be different liveries for different types of Locomotive.T

• The important Main Line locos were to be Blue.
• The normal passenger Locos were to be Green.
• Other Locos were to be Black.
• The southern electric stock were to be pale Blue, lined silver and black.

All liveries were to have 'BRITISH RAILWAYS' written in full.

All locos had smokebox number plates and red buffer beams.

However as these were only experimental colours it was decided that the now familiar Lion and wheel emblem was to be used instead of the lettering and all locomotives except the Main line were painted black. The main line locos were painted GWR green.

 

In 1957 liveries had become:

• Express passenger: dark green, lined with black and orange 
• Other passenger and mixed traffic classes: black, lined out in red, cream and grey
• Freight and Shunting classes: black unlined
• Many of the ex GWR locos that weren't express engines were being repainted in lined out in the old GWR liveries of dark green.
• Some LMS 'pacifics' were painted in the old LMS colours that were inherited from the old Midland Railway.

 

The Diesel and Electric locos were given GWR green colouring but there were also various experimental colours. The normal livery was not lined but most of the express locos had a horizontal white line on the side. At this time the yellow warning panels were being applied so track side workers could see the train coming and the shunting locos were given the wasp design now familiar.

Pilot locos at York, Darlington and Newcastle were painted in the old NER colours while the station pilot at Liverpool was turned out in dark blue after the Great Eastern Railway colours.

 

With Dieselisation and electrification the colours again changed to the two tone green and the electric blue before becoming the rather bland all over blue for locomotives and the blue and grey stripe on coaching stock in the 1970s.

But when BR started to be split up in to its seperate sectors the blue started to give way to Inter City grey striped and Railfreight grey colours. Network south east colouring was put on all ex southern region stock and a more colourful railway system developed.

 

Now with the private companies operating train services liveries are very varied and some liveries have given way to all over advertising as with Wessex trains.