CIE Carriage Liveries - The Green Era

[Mol_PMB]

Eventually all this research will get applied to some models, so I have ordered some paint:

[GSR 800]

Looks like I'll need to be painting a few roofs green!

[Mol_PMB]

19 minutes ago, GSR 800 said:

Looks like I'll need to be painting a few roofs green!

Roof colours will continue to be an interesting topic as I proceed through the 1950s. For new-build stock, I think black roofs were introduced in 1958. 

So many of the colour photos of the green era are from around 1960 that our view is skewed towards that period, and we don't realise that things were different in the early and mid 1950s.

Getting ahead of the timeline a bit, I don't think anyone could claim these mid-1950s roofs were black:

 

[Horsetan]

44 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

... I have ordered some paint:

This looks like those terrible "healthy smoothies" you can get from those middle-class café and deli chains.

[Mol_PMB]

3 hours ago, Horsetan said:

This looks like those terrible "healthy smoothies" you can get from those middle-class café and deli chains.

Would you like the Spinach, Avocado or Celery flavour?

226 is Mid Brunswick Green (CIE dark green), 221 is Brilliant Green (as used on the Park Royals and Wedgehead railcars when new, we haven't got that far through the story yet) and 216 is Eau de Nil.

They are custom enamel colours, matched to the BS381C colours, and in due course I'll try spraying them with the airbrush. Six 50ml pots plus postage cost a total of £50.

The same firm can also provide them as rattlecans.

 

[Westcorkrailway]

48 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Would you like the Spinach, Avocado or Celery flavour?

226 is Mid Brunswick Green (CIE dark green), 221 is Brilliant Green (as used on the Park Royals and Wedgehead railcars when new, we haven't got that far through the story yet) and 216 is Eau de Nil.

They are custom enamel colours, matched to the BS381C colours, and in due course I'll try spraying them with the airbrush. Six 50ml pots plus postage cost a total of £50.

The same firm can also provide them as rattlecans.

 

The rattle cans will be handy….

[Mol_PMB]

18 minutes ago, Westcorkrailway said:

The rattle cans will be handy….

https://onlinepaintshop.co.uk/product/custom-spray-paint-tinted-400ml/

 

[Horsetan]

1 hour ago, Mol_PMB said:

Would you like the Spinach, Avocado or Celery flavour?

....

The only thing that those things have got going for them is that they may assist the generation of a fart in a confined space. 

[Mol_PMB]

Staying on the subject of the plain dark green livery on the new stock built in the '1950 programme' (actually 1950-1952)

We've already seen that the livery of the first batch of compos was described as:

They are painted dark green, with no lining or light green band, but relieved by bright aluminium strips round the windows. The roof is also green, with the exception of a narrow black strip in the centre.

The livery of the next batch of thirds is not described in such detail and there is no explicit mention of the roof colour, although it looks the same as the body colour when viewed from the side. 

So this photo dated 9 May 1954 is interesting. In the foreground is one of the 1951 thirds in plain dark green livery, viewed from above. There is a clear demarkation in the paintwork on the roof, which might be the upper edge of the green paint: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509198220

I'm not sure the middle part of the roof would qualify as a 'narrow black strip in the centre' - it's actually most of the width of the roof - but perhaps there was a change in the width of the strip between the compos and thirds?

 

Roofs quickly got grubby, and good photos of clean roofs from elevated viewpoints are rare, which means that it's hard to be sure about the original roof colours.

However, modellers could reasonably paint them a dirty darkish grey all over without worrying too much about how much was originally painted green.

[Mol_PMB]

An interlude from the liveries as I have been experimenting with paint samples again. The colours shown here are all enamels, and were sprayed over a light grey primer as follows:

• D1 Humbrol 3 Brunswick Green gloss
• D2 Precision P892 Tank Green dull (this is what I was sent when I ordered CIE dark green)
• D3 BS381C 226 Mid Brunswick Green gloss  (custom enamel mix from onlinepaintshop.co.uk)
• D4 Revell SM363 satin
• D5 Revell SM364 satin (this is what we decided was the best match to CIE light green in an earlier thread)
• D6 BS381C 221 Brilliant Green gloss (custom enamel mix from onlinepaintshop.co.uk)
• D7 Railmatch SR Malachite Green gloss
• D8 BS381C 216 Eau-de-Nil gloss (custom enamel mix from onlinepaintshop.co.uk)

The photos were taken ourdoors in May under bright late morning sunshine. It might have been better if I had varnished them all - I could still do that.

 

First up, the darker shades D1 to D4 against a black background and a white background:

Humbrol 3 is near-identical to BS381C 226 Mid Brunswick Green. The Precision colour is more bluish, while the Revell colour is more brownish. Pushing together three of them for another comparison, plus Eau-de-Nil on the left:

 

Next, the lighter shades D5 to D8 against a black background and a white background.

The Revell 364 is just a shade lighter than the Railmatch malachite, but very similar in tone. The BS381C 221 Brilliant Green is a slightly richer, warmer colour.

Eau-de-Nil isn't meant to be comparable with these, but included for completeness. Pushing together the other three we get:

 

Here's a comparison between EdN, light green, dark green and brilliant green, pushed together.

It's amazing how much the background colour and automatic exposure adjustment of the phone camera makes a massive difference to the apparent shades. Of course, in photos of the real thing the lighting conditions, camera settings and film sensitivity also make big differences.

I think the black background is more useful for colour comparison but the phone does tend to make the EdN look a bit luminous in the sunshine. So I've taken another photo of the samples indoors, with indirect lighting from natural light outside. And the same again under my layout lighting. For these photos I have added one more light green shade from my previous experiments: sample 7 is Revell SM360.

Indirect daylight:

Layout lighting:

 

I'd say that both D1 (Humbrol 3) and D3 (BS381C 226) are good for CIE dark green when new. For the weathered faded look when it often turned a bit bluish, D2 (Precision P892) is useful. D8 (BS381C 216) is the Eau-de-Nil shade.

Uses for the lighter greens will have to wait until this thread gets a bit further into the 1950s...

 

[Mol_PMB]

The AEC Railcars

While Inchicore was turning out new and old carriages in the plain dark green livery, the AEC Railcars were under construction in England. The underframes were produced by AEC and the bodies were added by Park Royal. Despite some opposition from the Irish government for some local content, they were entirely built and finished in England.

The first 20 had been ordered in 1950, and a further 40 in 1951. Construction followed those previously built for GNR, and the design was very similar. The first two arrived in December 1951, followed by another two in early 1952. Deliveries then stopped for a year, largely owing to strike action at Inchicore and sympathetic strikes by dock-workers who refused to unload them in Dublin. The disputes were resolved at the end of 1952 and deliveries recommenced in January 1953, with all 60 delivered by June 1954. The order had been for 60 main line cars but CIE later changed their mind and Park Royal outshopped three types of vehicle:

• 2600-2647 'Main Line' with first and third class, tables, toilets, guard's van plus a heating boiler in even-numbered cars.
• 2648-2657 'Suburban' as above but without tables or toilets, having an extra bay of 4 seats instead of the toilet.
• 2658-2659 'Waterford & Tramore' with high-density bus-type seating throughout, 2658 having a heating boiler.

In 'Diesel Dawn' (Flanagan), it is stated:

All the CIE railcars were initially painted in dark green, but later received a lighter shade than hitherto which looked very smart.

Photographs and memories (such as @Northroader's a few posts back) support the statement that all 60 were delivered in dark green. IRRS reports from 1951/2 describe the arrival of the railcars but do not mention their livery, perhaps further cicumstantial evidence that there was no change in colour worth mentioning.

At the time of their order, the CIE livery would have been the late 1940s elaborately lined dark green, but by the time they were being built the plain dark green had replaced it. The dark green scheme applied to the railcars used the same colours but was intermediate in style between the elaborate and the plain schemes. I bought a slide on ebay which shows this original livery very nicely; elsewhere I have seen this credited to Colour Rail but I cannot find it on their website. West Cork fans will like this shot of 2637 at Bantry in May 1955. It had been in traffic about 8 months, so this is a great illustration of the original condition:

The main colour is dark green, with a thin EdN line on the waist beading. Windows have shiny metal frames, and the buffer beam is red with black buffer shanks.

On the sides, classes 1 and 3 are indicated by large EdN digits, and there is also a large snail transfer. Not obvious in this photo, the vehicle number was shown towards the right-hand end of each side as usual.

The vehicle number was also shown on the end. As delivered from England, the number was immediately below the waist line as seen in the image above. Photos indicate that Inchicore practice was to place it lower down, so the position of this number on the front end can be a guide to whether the car has been repainted. Later still, a larger size numeral was used, but that will have to wait until we get to the very late 1950s.

In the image above we can see that the solebars and skirts were also dark green, but not so obvious is that the bogies were painted silver. Here's a closer look at the bogies when new:

The front ends were obviously green, but not so obvious in many images is that the intermediate ends were also green. This IRRS photo of the blunt end of a newly-delivered car shows the black buffers contrasting with the green end:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53506776108

This photo also shows a green intermediate end, as well as the extent of the silver paint on the bogies and underframe equipment:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509287160

Here are some shots of the early trial runs:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53508838923

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/54308511828

By May 1952 the first 4 cars were in traffic on Dublin-Waterford services, and there are quite a lot of photos of the new toys. Just a few linked here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507783362

https://www.thetransportlibrary.co.uk/-/galleries/rail/lens-of-sutton-association/lens-of-sutton-association-irish-railways-part-2/-/medias/488ba1cc-ff73-4225-ab7b-933bc98bd438-cie-2600-twin-railcar-at-waterford-26-4-52-jn-faulkner

https://www.thetransportlibrary.co.uk/-/galleries/rail/lens-of-sutton-association/lens-of-sutton-association-irish-railways-part-2/-/medias/5a0f0819-e9a0-4316-b97f-f87fd2378bd5-cie-2600-2601-twin-railcar-set-at-inchicore-05-04-52-rk-kir

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507047870

Once deliveries recommenced in 1953 the cars quickly spread across the network reaching the furthest extents of the system:

So, what colour was the roof in this original railcar livery? I'm pretty sure that the roof dome above the cab was green, same as the cab end. The rest of the roof is more matt in appearance, and often appears a little lighter when new and clean. I wonder if it was originally light grey as on the GNR AEC railcars?

Whatever it was originally, the roofs quickly became dirty dark grey as shown in the colour photo at the top of this post. But do have a closer look at the roof dome on that image - there are hints of green under the grime.

 

The books say that all 60 railcars were delivered in dark green; we've seen 2600, 2609, 2637 so let's finish with 2659, last of the Park Royal built cars built specially for the W&T. Here it is in 1957 when it was 3 years old - this images appears in 'Irish Railways in the 1950s and 1960s' (McCormack) p125. As a contrast, the second vehicle in the train is 2657 which was modified at Inchicore to W&T specification in 1955 and repainted at the same time into a lighter green scheme. They're both a bit grubby but you can see a difference, though it's not entirely conclusive. I'm tended to support the view that the AECs were all dark green initially.

 

I will deal with the later liveries of the AEC railcars as we get to them in the timeline.

My next post will consider the intermediate coaches that were painted to match the railcars they ran with - some new and some old vehicles.