Preservation, RPSI stock, Era's- I've lots of questions!

[dave182]

 

I've posted this video as it has got me thinking! My interest has always been the 90's, as its when I grew up, and this seems to be the case with many modellers! You model scenes that you remember vividly, and probably miss now! I would like to have an element of preservation represented on my layout, but it throws up some questions and conundrums!

I admire the work that the RPSI and the ITG do, and also understand that they need a hell of a lot of funding to keep the show on the road. That said, a personal gripe of mine is the fact that they have stock painted in their own colour scheme. For example the mk2's in RPSI Green, and the cravens in the blue. In my head it kind of takes away from the whole preservation thing, but I stress that this is my own personal opinion, and I know IR are a bit touchy when it comes to the Black n Tan and Black/Orange/White stripe thing!

Anyways, can someone talk me through the set of coaches in the above video. I see some park royals. Is there a Craven in there painted green? Are the colours used on these coaches reasonably authentic?

Finally, many of you have a bachmann green flying snail livered coaches, the 57' Stanier Coach. Are these a UK model painted in this livery, or did they actually run on the Irish network?

Finally finally (!) thanks again JHB achill for sharing your wisdom on the liveries in use, this information is fantastic and I find myself referring back to your posts constantly.

 

regards,

 

Dave

Edited April 18, 2013 by dave182

[Garfield]

 

I've posted this video as it has got me thinking! My interest has always been the 90's, as its when I grew up, and this seems to be the case with many modellers! You model scenes that you remember vividly, and probably miss now! I would like to have an element of preservation represented on my layout, but it throws up some questions and conundrums!

I admire the work that the RPSI and the ITG do, and also understand that they need a hell of a lot of funding to keep the show on the road. That said, a personal gripe of mine is the fact that they have stock painted in their own colour scheme. For example the mk2's in RPSI Green, and the cravens in the blue. In my head it kind of takes away from the whole preservation thing, but I stress that this is my own personal opinion, and I know IR are a bit touchy when it comes to the Black n Tan and Black/Orange/White stripe thing!

Anyways, can someone talk me through the set of coaches in the above video. I see some park royals. Is there a Craven in there painted green? Are the colours used on these coaches reasonably authentic?

Finally, many of you have a bachmann green flying snail livered coaches, the 57' Stanier Coach. Are these a UK model painted in this livery, or did they actually run on the Irish network?

Finally finally (!) thanks again JHB achill for sharing your wisdom on the liveries in use, this information is fantastic and I find myself referring back to your posts constantly.

 

regards,

 

Dave

 

All ITG stock is painted in authentic liveries. As for the blue and green liveries of the Cravens and Mk2s, they are, as you pointed out, painted in fictitious liveries chiefly because IÉ don't want anything orange roaming around the network when they're trying to push a new corporate identity (regardless of whether or not there are 071s still wearing the colours). What else are the RPSI supposed to do under those circumstances? Anyway, many of the Mk2s are ex-BR so wouldn't have been painted orange anyway...

 

The set of coaches in the video above is the 'heritage set', which has authentic liveries. From what I can make out from the footage, the coaching set that day consisted of laminate coaches and Park Royals.

 

As for the Stanier coach... they never ran here.

[Lough Erne]

Looking at the coach rake it appears to be GNRB No9, A Park Royal, GNRI No88, CIE Laminate 2421, A standard open Laminate, a Park Royal and a Laminate Brake 1916. See below link for details http://www.steamtrainsireland.com/carriages/dublin_vintage.html.

Stanier coaches like that never ran here however if painted in LMS NCC would not look out of place after 1945 as they would resemble the ex MR and LMS coaches brought over after Hitlers gifts to York Road.

As regards the MK2s in my opinion the green suits them very well and they would have looked awful in maroon and everyone was sick of the maroon anyway. If painted in their original or even authentic liveries you would have 2 NIR blue and maroon coaches or some form of NIR livery, and the rest in BR blue and grey unless you chose a mixture of Scotrail, Network southeast etc. And 303 would be painted orange of course. This would have looked awful and it was therefore decided since the coaches had steam era design features they would be painted in the last steam era livery -UTA Green. However this was put to poll for all the members to decide and won by a considerable margin.

 

As regards the coach liveries above I would agree that it is a shame that Nos 9 and 88 are not in authentic GNR colours but such is life!

[snapper]

The set in order of appearance in that video is:

1949

1383

88

2421

1463

1419

1916

 

You can find more details about them in Lough Erne’s link.

There is a RPSI craven that was painted green below the windows (1539) but it is not included in the set above.

[jhb171achill]

Liveries in preserved ITG and RPSI stock are a mix of the absolutely authentic, the not authentic, and the RPSI's own livery.

 

First, the accurate. The RPSI "wooden" set are all authentic bar the maroon one with the flying snail logo. Needless to say, nothing ever ran in maroon in any CIE livery. This livery dates from a film contract after which expediency dictated making it match the rest as best as it could with limited finance and manpower. Some Cravens are still in IE livery.

 

The society's own liveries are the blue for the Dublin Craven set, designed to stand out entirely from anything else, and the UTA-esque livery on the Whitehead set. The green is close enough to UTA green, but the lining and lettering are different. They use yellow and red instead of the UTA's straw and red, and the lines are separate red and yellow, as opposed to straw lined BOTH above and below in a thinner red line.

 

Finally, for those concerned with livery accuracy, a few pointers. The only ITG loco not authentically painted is G611, which is green with black chassis and flying snail. Only the first three "G"s ever carried green, and (a) the chassis was green too, and (b) they had no flying snail, just the number. RPSI's 461 carries lined CIE passenger green - a joy to behold! But the green is not quite the right shade (it would have been easy to copy it from "Maedb" in Cultra), though to be fair it's not far off it. Apart from the three 800 class, all green CIE loco's had a painted number. Of the three 800s, one had red backgrounds to its numberplates, and two had blue, as in GSR days.

 

186 is authentic in grey, though for some reason they have allowed the smoke box and chimney to become progressively dirtier to look more "black", but this is not authentic, as (like 078) everything was grey.

 

I should point out here - very strongly - that I state the above as a matter of historical record, and under no circumstances whatever is it meant to imply any criticism of any of the aforementioned organisations. Volunteers in both

[jhb171achill]

(Continuation) organisations do a fantastic job in difficult conditions and it is better to put a coach into traffic with good brakes and a hasty livery than the other way round. The Bachman coaches have an authentic livery for CIE 1945 - 1955, though examples of coaches in this darker green were still to be seen into the early 60s.

[Glenderg]

The Bachman coaches have an authentic livery for CIE 1945 - 1955, though examples of coaches in this darker green were still to be seen into the early 60s.

 

I'm a bit sceptical about this JH. Bachmann proport that the livery in question is thus.

 

 

 

Photos I've seen on and offline suggest that a single band is present up top and a narrower band below. There appears to be two very thin lines of black on the bottom band. But it's not universal.

 

 

Lastly, there is the most "accurate" of all sources.

Hollywood.

 

 

What's the story JHB? Have I lost the plot or should I forget it all, and move on to the apple green livery? Even though the coaches look sweet in that livery.

 

 

Confused in green and mint, richie.

[jhb171achill]

Richie - I was referring more to the shades of colours rather than the dimensions of the lower lines. You are quite right in that they tended to be narrower than those above window level, and of course the lighter green lines were themselves lined - unlike when the later light green livery was used. The TPO at Downpatrick and the laminates in the Dublin RPSI set, to take a few examples, are correct for the later green livery.

 

One of the reasons that the black and tan livery (once standardised) had the height of the divisions between the tan, black and white at the same height from rail level was to provide uniformity of "look" - the idea was to make a train within which no two vehicles were the same, look more streamlined and uniform. Prior to this, light green lines could vary in height depending on what they were painted on. Thus, if NCC style coaching stock (a la Bachmann) had worn this livery, they might wdell have ended up as on the model, but looking closer at those models, while the colour shades are right, the lower line should indeed be narrower.

 

Hope this helps!