CIE bus liveries, an oddity

[minister_for_hardship]

Just when you think you had seen them all, pic gleaned from a FB group. Photographer unknown.

[Noel]

Looks not entirely unlike this 1/76 bus from Hattons:

http://www.hattons.co.uk/86892/EFE_16136_Leyland_PD2_Highbridge_C_I_E_Southern_Ireland_/StockDetail.aspx

[minister_for_hardship]

Except for the CIE broken wheel on green of course.

[Noel]

11 minutes ago, minister_for_hardship said:

Except for the CIE broken wheel on green of course.

I thought many of the 'flying snail' city buses got the CIE broken wheel for year or two before they were eventually repainted cream and blue.

[jhb171achill]

I replied to that one - a very rare oddity, and possibly - if not probably - a one-off.

They started painting buses in the new livery about the end of 1961 / early 1962, at which time the snail was still in bogie. For maybe some weeks, snails were applied to both red and cream "country" buses and navy and cream city ones. Thus, snails on new livery buses, while not at all common, were indeed to be seen. And they were white, not gold-lined "eau-de-nil" light green. 

Therefore, the above represents a one-off attempt by somebody in a bus garage to apply the new badge to an old bus. Possibly it received a scratch along the side at some stage after the new logo had come in, and rather than give the bus it's overdue new livery repaint, they touched up the area in green and stuck the new logo on. It is therefore possible that the other side had a snail. Another likely reason is that it's maybe 1963 or 4, and they run out of right-hand facing snails, which adorned buses on this side, steam loco tenders, and nothing else. If so, it's understandable they've none left as (a) steam is finished, and (b) bus repaints have the new logo anyway!

This type of thing is not unusual at a time of livery change. Immediately after the GNR was taken over by CIE in September 1958, locos about to be outshopped from Dundalk emerged in full lined blue (passenger) or unlined black (everything else) but without the GNR crest or lettering "G N" or "G N R".

Around 1987-90, a few diesels appeared with old CIE "Supertrain" livery, as yet un-repainted with "tippex" white stripes - but with the new IE "set of points" logo. One engine at least had then on the sides, but CIE "roundels" still on the ends.

Today, we can see an occasional ICR with no less than three variations from the normal IE coloured "flag" logo. A very small number of ICR vehicles have the wording but no flag, all-white logo and wording, or all-black wording and logo.

In steam days, the RPSIs No. 4 carried a UTA crest on one side, and a new NIR logo on the other for a while.

On CIE, while some tenders had eau-de-nil snails on their tenders, others had plain tenders. (None had yellow, cream or white snails!). Locos which still retained numberplates usually had the raised edges and numerals picked out in light yellow, but in some cases this applied only to the numbers. In GSR days, plates were very occasionally just painted over.

At the very end of steam on CIE, one J15 based in Cork, one Bandon Tank, and one ex-MGWR G2, had black smokeboxes but the rest grey, instead of a grey smokebox as usual.

Currently, several Isle of Man coaches have neither crests nor even numbers due to being needed in traffic before they were ready!

There are always interesting variations. On David Holman's truly excellent Arigna Road, we have a superb model of the dark red locomotive that the CVR had - the others were green! 

And look at NIR's three 071s. I reckon that no two repaints of any of the trio have a yellow patch the same size and shape!

In latter days, IE started using a different font for loco numerals. Those on 146 at Downpatrick (which are IE originals) are of this later non standard font,  not applied to all that many locos.

 

[minister_for_hardship]

They had an intermediate logo IIRC, just 'CIE' in bold letters on a white rectangle, used on road freight vehicles, some general publicity and lasted into the 80's in the form of a cap badge.

[jhb171achill]

Very true - most usually seen as a header on newspaper ads, and on road freight vehicles and early containers.

[jhb171achill]

5 hours ago, Noel said:

I thought many of the 'flying snail' city buses got the CIE broken wheel for year or two before they were eventually repainted cream and blue.

Usually the other way round - snails appearing on new navy or red liveries.

[minister_for_hardship]

Another one that appears to be two-tone green with 'broken wheel'.