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Liveries!

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by 61624, Jan 17, 2018.

  1. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    That'll be down to their locations, and where they go, and perhaps their general operating model. I seriously doubt painting trains in brighter colours is the panacea to better finances! The VofR has been making more of an effort in the last several years in painting things in more authentic colours I understand, if they've seen a corresponding drop in passenger numbers I will of course immediately go out and buy some tins of purple paint for the paintshop at Winchcombe. :)
     
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  2. tony51

    tony51 New Member

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    If the “wrong” livery brings in more income, then that is a significant advantage. Especially at that moment.
     
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  3. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    I agree, and if that was the case then the comparison @Monkey Magic has drawn before is more valid than I've given it credit for. But I just don't buy it. I actually have more sympathy for the argument of giving locomotives that never had them names. I've seen far more anecdotal evidence that a black engine with a name is more memorable than a green engine without one.
     
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  4. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    Why should the colour of the loco matter but not the type of carriages? Why does the colour matter but not the location?

    Some might say, better to have a br liveried loco on a set of br liveried coaches that match but that neither carried than to have an authentic livery on both and them be mismatched.

    Would you paint a mk1 in a livery it never carried?

    Or a war on the line weekend with mk1s, De Gaulle impersonators etc etc,

    I don't get why the colours a loco has carried in the preservation era are less legitimate than the colours a loco carried when it was in BR, industrial grouping or pre-grouping service. They are part of the history of the object.

    Far from being reduction ad absurdum instead it highlights the arbitrary limits of the 'authenticity' argument. A line is drawn in the sand based not on logic but on what people like. I've no problem with that, but don't try and tell me that there is a sound intellectual argument from drawing the line where you choose to draw it.

    All heritage recreation is a compromise between what feasible, the demands of the market and what is desirable. Getting upset because the market drives a choice to paint a loco in 'inauthentic' colours is tilting at windmills.

    If someone wants to pretend it is 1943 and have their fantasy about what war was like then good luck to them, but they are no different than the person who is living out a fantasy about an 'authentic' recreation of a freight train from 1950 that they can photograph or whatever period floats their boat, and it is no different to dressing up locos with faces and calling them Thomas, they are inauthentic too because it isn't Sodor and that isn't the real Thomas. If someone wants to run a 1980s weekend with people dressed up as New Romantics and Yuppies, and have 'authentic' liveries from that era good luck to them if they or others want to pay for it.

    If in a few years time someone decides they want to recreate the privatisation era and repaint things in Virgin colours, again, good luck to them.

    If it brings in money to allow lines to have the nice things, like money to restore vintage carriages or to paint a loco in a historic livery then I don't care what people do.

    I simply feel that the last 50 years of the preservation era, with all its choices should be treated with the same level of respect and reverence as the pre-preservation era. What has happened to those pieces of machinery whether it is modifications, liveries, names or locations matters and is part of their history as much as anything else.
     
  5. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

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    What are the real differences between a journey to Paignton and a journey to Minehead that should cause only one to be a commercial success. Perhaps one is longer-that surely would be an advantage. Or perhaps one is closer to London, or Bristol, or Birmingham or somewhere, maybe that's it. Or perhaps one is striving to be a truer re-creation of a GWR branch line than the other. Could that be the ace?
     
  6. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    I think @flying scotsman123 has it when pointing to the general operating model as the key factor. So far the comparison seems to have assumed marketing and income - I suspect the real difference is in the focus on maximising fares income and minimising operational costs. The volunteer/charity ethos of most railways puts limits on what you can do with either.

    But that conversation is really one for another thread.
     
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  7. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

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    Yes, you're right. Clearly having a lot of unpaid staff is a terrific drain on resources
     
  8. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Length isn't necessarily an advantage. the WSR is 3 or 4 times the length of the P&D but it can't charge 3 or 4 times the amount. Although they're not a million miles away, the P&D is in a much more touristy area than Minehead, and benefits from high passenger numbers, which can sustain paid staff, which mean they can run more and do more attracting even more passengers. Very few other railways have enough passenger numbers to break into that category. The NYMR is close, but it has higher operating costs than the P&D elsewhere so still has to rely on a large volunteer workforce.

    I go back to the central argument, that using inauthentic liveries is totally irrelevant to passenger numbers. One of the reasons the P&D does have inauthentic liveries is because it doesn't require the support of enthusiasts to operate, so in fact folk pointing there are in fact getting cause and effect the wrong way around.
     
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  9. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    I hope I do treat it with respect. I've been involved in it for those fifty years!
     
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  10. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

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    As I said at first, greater minds than mine seem sure.
     
  11. martin1656

    martin1656 Nat Pres stalwart Friend

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    Liveries, :eek: Some engines can only be painted in one livery if you want to be authentic, take the Rebuilt West Country for example, rebuilt by Br into a form that can only authentically carry BR passenger Green, where as an original, can be turned out an any variation of Southern sunshine livery, either with its Southern number, or even with British Railways on the tender sides through to Br Green, you could if so inclined paint one Stroudly improved engine green if you wanted, but it won't be authentic,
     
  12. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    I am not sure everyone does though. The industry would be no where without industrials and second hand blue and grey mk1s that kept many lines ticking over for a number of years

    My final point is simply that the choice of what to do rests with either the funders or the restorers. If someone wants to set a date and do everything they can to make their loco, carriage or truck how it was then, then I have nothing but respect for the hard work necessary to do that. If someone says I like this colour scheme and it is completely inauthentic then fair enough for that as well. Better something is running in an inauthentic livery than sitting in a siding rotting away.
     
  13. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    [QUOTE="Monkey Magic, post: 2572695, member: 28001" Better something is running in an inauthentic livery than sitting in a siding rotting away.[/QUOTE]

    But again, I come back to the fact that that's never an either/or scenario.
     
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  14. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    I am not so sure. The obvious example would be the various Thomas impersonators around the country who have one job and if they didn’t do it then they would be pushed to the end of the headshunt. I can certainly think of a few examples where a major funder chose the livery and without them the project would have taken a longer at least.
     
  15. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Fair enough on the Thomas front, good point well made. I'm struggling to think of many examples where a major donor has specified an inauthentic livery though, unless they're sole owner of it, like David Smith etc.
     
  16. MattA

    MattA Member

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    I feel like I may be the exception rather than the norm, but I don't mind some engines, that never had a name in BR service, being given the name of a scrapped classmate e.g. Mayflower.
     
  17. MattA

    MattA Member

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    I would hesitate to call the DSR, VoR and BMR "awful", even if they are different to the other steam-operated railways! All offer a memorable train journey through spectacular scenery and, in the case of the narrow-gauge ones, provide motive power like nothing else in the country.
     
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  18. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Not all of them. Of the preserved original locos, I think only five can legitimately be turned out in SR livery, and to my knowledge, only one of them is routinely presented in that way. (One of the other five has its greatest historical significance to be presented as running in 1964; and the other three seem always to have been in the drab BR livery in the preservation era).

    I do applaud @Spamcan81 and his group for turning out 34081 in a historically very interesting, and under-represented, livery: if you are going to commemorate British Railways, at least - if at all possible - make it a bit different from that insipid GWR green!

    Tom
     
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  19. Johnb

    Johnb Nat Pres stalwart

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    The VoR certainly isn’t since it was taken over by a group more sympathetic to its origins. They have gone to a lot of trouble to return the engines to GW condition as far as possible and hide the air pump in the partitioned water tanks
     
  20. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    What do the authenticity police make of the proposal to run K1 62005 as K1/1 61997 MacCailin Mor?

    The argument being the publicity generated will be good both with enthusiasts and the wider public on the Jacobite. The cost of making cosmetic changes to the loco will be covered by the photo charter community.
     

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