First Great Western
An early FGW Sprinter livery seemed to lack quality in favour of a mix of stripes and First Group squiggles; it was later replaced by a similar scheme adopted for the HSTs. Enthusiasts called it "neon".
Train watchers were surprised when management moved away from Group colours and even downplayed the 'First' name and logo in favour of ...
... a rather muted dark green with very little relief and the GWR name. Dull, just like South Western Railway.
Meanwhile in the Midlands ...
The very attractive livery of Central Trains disappeared when the company's business was hacked apart.
Stagecoach's East Midlands livery was NOT exactly the same as that for South Western ...
... having a bulge in the lighter blue body side stripe.
An out of favour Stagecoach was replaced by Abellio, from Netherlands State Railways. Abellio sold itself and all its British transport interests to a Management buyout styled Transport UK.
The overall maroon livery was distinguished and seemed to be kept shiny and smart although some interim versions were, to coin a phrase, unfortunate.
... although the company name was somewhat lost in a vast area of purple. This has been corrected with the latest refurb of the 158 units.
The revised logo is bigger, although drop shadow lettering tends to look a bit dated.
Once the full repaint was complete, however, things settled down nicely ...
And So To Scotland ...
... where a variety of brands and liveries were designed to confuse Glaswegians. GG was 'Greater Glasgow' and 'Trans Clyde' hinted at the linking of North Glasgow electrics the with the South via the Argyle line.
GG became SPT (with various interpretations) and trains became orange (a k a Strathclyde Red).
But units began appearing in maroon and cream.
Non PTE Scotrail's 158 units were given their own livery for a while ...
... to be supplanted by First in privatisation.
Now Scotrail is back with the Scottish Government, we have the spotty but distinguished blue of the Scotland Saltire ...
.... which leaves us with Northern.
Oh dear, what a mess!
Northern Trains' collection of liveries will follow later.
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Peterville Quarry Railway
After a sore tooth, eight days in hospital, four week's recovery and hot weather, fbb has returned to the top floor to play catch-up on his sadly neglected model railway.
After a significant re-jig of the track, it was time to begin the process of putting the scenery back. Readers may remember that all fbb's scenery is removable except the quarry rock face.
Meet sticky fixers.
All you do is peel off the backing film; peel off the fronting film then these squares stick anything to anything. Peeling the films takes huge amounts of patience and of finger tip dexterity. It takes about 15 minutes each square which then welds itself to elderly fingers.
But these patches do fix the hillsides to the wall. Here we see a bit more basic hillside; so sticky fixers have stuck.
It also works with the original hardboard hills which came in from the cold of the previous outdoor layout.
The light coloured bit is the frame of the door providing access to storage under the eaves. It will become a low relief 'Castle Halt' forming the far end of the layout.
The big question is whether the sticky fixers can be removed without removing lumps of plaster.
Note that the retaining wall has been lightened with a wash of thin white paint. The pale green guacamole is in preparation for adding darker green scatter 'grass' to hide the gaps.
Trees are useful for disguising the joins!
A 'hack' ensures that the track will be glued to a thick card base so that trains will not crash into the bridge where clearances are tight.
The Noch proprietary castle has also had a wash of thin white to match it better with the heavily butchered Metcalf cardboard outer defences.
A couple of sweaty mornings and progress is made!
Next Variety blog : Sunday 12th July
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