Atomic Systems

I've seen many liveries in my time. EWS, Southern, SouthWest Trains, SouthEastern, National Express and so on. For most of my life, I've lived in the Herts town of Bishops Stortford. Right now, there are National Express painted trains running the routes between Cambridge and Liverpool St./Stratford. Most of them are white, or mostly white, which gives the impression of modern and clean. But the dirt shows if it somehow runs through dirt. On the old 317's, that's alright, they've plying the line for nearly 30 years. But the on the new £79's, dirt is unacceptable. The new so-called Greater Anglia people had better paint our trains cool colours.

But I really miss the colours of WAGN, when they operated my line. I loved the colours of those trains. Then ONE took over and all the WAGN trains disappeared. One of these old WAGN liveried trains soldiered on in their colours until maybe 2009. That's many years shorter for the last Network SouthEast livery to disappear. Name the liveries you miss the most, recent and old. Post a picture if you want and remember the days of those liveries, for they shall never come again.

I happen to remember all the the NSE, WAGN and 'one' liveries etc, mainly because I live in Stansted Mountfitchet (one station north of Stortford for those not certain on location!) Shows you how small the world is really!

Because Greater Anglia's franchise contract is so short I can't imagine them painting their trains anything other than the white they're in, simply because there isn't any point, if they get a 10 year contract or something where they can do some bigger things to the lines and trains then maybe!

But besides all the ones I've grown up on top of for 18 years of living, one that does stick in my head is the old Valley Lines colours, the red, white and green one, always looked pretty decent on Pacers running through Cardiff Central!

Adam

For me, you cannot beat BR blue

rfletcher72 wrote:For me, you cannot beat BR blue

Here Here .... ..... unless BR Green

Richard, Jon agree with you both, but then in those days we used to have real trains, if a train was a minute late then it was latenot like today when you see wome of the WTT times and a train 15 minutes late can still be on time


I feel that the old days should refer to anything pre-sectorisation

hi superdrive. yes i know how small the world is i know where Mountfitchet is as I used to go to the college there.

Back to the subject, yes, I liked the WAGN colours, my favourite livery. Did I mention there was one 317 still in those colours in 2008? I think I did, but no harm in repeating. Short memory of mine. XD

I'm amazed you can still see the old First Great Eastern white, blue & green on some Class 321's. They've gone through being branded One, National Express East Anglia and now Greater Anglia but still the colours of the much loved FGE show with a different logo/company name as time has gone on. Not bad seeing as it ceased to exist in 2004!

No idea how many of these units still carry this livery though, but i did see one at Clacton yesterday.

Have to say that I miss the original Great Western livery before First were involved.

JavelinSprinter wrote:hi superdrive. yes i know how small the world is i know where Mountfitchet is as I used to go to the college there.

Back to the subject, yes, I liked the WAGN colours, my favourite livery. Did I mention there was one 317 still in those colours in 2008? I think I did, but no harm in repeating. Short memory of mine. XD

Yep, I went there as well, briefly mind, but that's a long and non-train livery related story!

Yes all these old liveries do seem to live out for ages, all the old One railway bluey colour will probably be hanging around on all the 315s, 317s and 321s etc for years to come!

Come to think of old liveries, anybody remember the old LTS livery that was applied to some 317s, it was basically the same as the standard NSE livery but had a green stripe across the bottom instead of the usual red? That always interested me when I was younger, as I never knew at the time why the green stripe was there instead!

Adam

Another two livery survivors at National Express are Anglia Railways (on 3 of the 4 2 car Turbostars) and Central Trains (on I think 2 of the 156s). The former is fondly remembered and missed, the second, good riddance although I did like their livery. A few Anglia Mk2s are still around too, as are bits of Mk2 set AR01 which remained in Intercity livery (with the exception of the DBSO which was in 'one' livery) until withdrawn by 'one'.

For me GNER was a brilliant livery.

The old virgin livery was great, and I agree that it's a shame that GNER doesn't operate anymore

gswindale wrote:Have to say that I miss the original Great Western livery before First were involved.

For me, you could end that sentence after the word "livery"...

"Would sir like cream with his chocolate? And a copper cap?"

David