The BR Blue Era

Presenter: Robert Warburton

Meeting Held at Shenfield Parish Hall

We welcomed Robert Warburton from Peterborough presenting The BR Blue Era. He reminded us that blue was in use before, with the prototype Deltic for instance.A little further back, just after nationalisation, experiments were conducted with the frontline 8P locomotives of the former Big Four treated in this way – in some cases two different hues and linings.Who can forget the Kings so adorned!Colour is a matter of taste and the LNE A4s in garter blue with red wheels, perhaps demonstrated a happier combination.

At an exhibition at the London Design Centre in 1963 British Railways became British Rail and a new era of design was born.Blue was chosen as a modern looking colour for locos and rolling stock.In some case passenger stock was resplendent in two tones – blue and a sort of pale grey.Many found the new liveries agreeable with modern stock, but the sight of the blue Brighton Belle is surely best forgotten.The changeover took some time and there were trains with unfortunate combinations of old and new livery for a number of years.

Robert is widely travelled and treated us to slides from around the UK.It was interesting to observe the number of loco classes that made it into the blue era, including some of the Modernisation Plan diesels, although many were scrapped in their original green.We saw blue examples of Baby Deltics, Class 28s, Western NB hydraulics, as well as class 76 electrics.

In the current privatised Technicolor era we are unlikely to witness another standardised nationwide colour transformation..