Train liveries - any faves?

[al.currie93]

The Gatwick Express livery, especially on 73202

Just looks good, not boring and drab but also not tacky and overly colourful

 

[sprinterguy]

The late 90's/early privatisation era was the best for liveries. (not my photos, credit/rights to the owners)

My two favourites are Intercity Swallow and the old Virgin red & black, so even better when the two are together...

90006 by Tutenkhamun Sleeping, on Flickr

Now there’s something that brings back happy memories: Intercity liveried locos on Virgin red liveried stock, and vice versa: Also both favourites of mine.

Closely followed by the transpenninexpress maroon & gold from Northern Spirit days...

In fact, any of the Northern Spirit liveries with the stylised 'N' work well for me;
Northern Spirit.. by delticfan, on Flickr

I can also fully support this view – I thought the Northern Spirit livery was great.

And finally, Midland Mainline 'bambi'

Again, I agree entirely with your taste in train liveries.

I would also like to throw in GNER and the NatEx Scotrail livery as two of my post-privatisation favourites.
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Little pedant, but the "91" in virgin livery is actually a mk3 DVT (class 82 - except it is technically a carriage!) but it does look similar to the mk4 DVT, which also looks like a 91.

The FNW london services were (usually) operated by 322s, which looked like this:

Actually, there was only the one class 322 that received the North West Trains "gold star" livery. The rest of the small fleet retained some form of debranded "Stansted Skytrain" grey even after FNW were finished with them and they transferred to Scotland.
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Worst, I'm afraid to say is West Coast's, they have a cracking fleet of loco's but the livery is just so drab.

I agree, West Coast Railway's "mud brown" livery is truly appalling: I have difficulty believing that the shade that they have used is intended to match the maroon coaching stock when the shade of maroon that the Western region used to do the exact same job on its’ ‘Westerns’ and ‘Warships’ looked so much more appealing.

 

[talltim]

Silver Link as originally painted on the A4s complete with silver train.
ACTS/PortFeeders
Elgin Joliet and Eastern locos. I just like orange trains.

 

[klewer]

The Eversholt Livery on 321448 looks superb in my opinion.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

BR Era:
Good- NSE on units, Large logo blue on locomotives.
Bad- Red/blue 'departmental' as seen on 'Ixion'.
Ugly- WYPTE Green/off-white as seen on unrefurbished 141s.

Privatisation Era:
Good- GNER
Bad- Any version of First's corporate livery: They're trains, not buses!
Ugly- Any hybrid/transitional livery such as the Transpennine 158s after FirstGroup took over.

 

[FQ]

My all time favourite!!!
(Not my picture).

 

[Beveridges]

Loadhaul

Loadhaul

Loadhaul

 

[33056]

Probably my favourite:


Which will explain why I like the Croatian Railways diesel livery:


Favourite "classic" livery:


or this version:

 

[White shadow]

I really like the SWT livery in the 450's but don't like the one on the 444's/junipers etc.

Southern is a lovely livery and that class 73 they have recently done looks brilliant in it

Never liked the rail freight grey.... Found everything to be a bit dull and boring in that.

I like to look back on flickr and see all the variations of liveries the pacers had, never realised there were so many!, I like the cream and brown!

 

[WestCountry]

Like others, I think GC orange/black looks brilliant on the 180s.
LM and Southern green look good on 350s and 377s respectively, but both look very fussy on 15x/313/321 with the hopper windows.

My all-round favorite is the SWT range of liveries - they look very good on everything from a 153 (or an Optare Solo!) to a Meridian, and differentiate service groups while unambiguously representing a single brand. The white variant is IMO the best livery ever carried by every single class they put it on (158/9, 170, 222, 444, 458, HST).

 

[Andyh82]

The current FirstGroup liveries as seen on FTPE, FCC, FGW etc rather than the original version seen on First North Western etc.

GNER

Transpennine Express in Northern Spirit days.

Any of the current SWT or EMT liveries

I also didn't mind the One Railway livery

Worst liveries..
Arriva Trains original - basically identical to the bus livery
Any liveries that are almost plain white like National Express
Great Western 'fag packet'
I recall WAGN had a strange livery at one point

And as has been said, any livery that is someone else's with stickers all over, especially when they are kept like that for many years - TPE after the First take over, the state of the East Coast mainline for the last few years, the current mess of liveries in the eastern counties.

 

[Strathclyder]

Current TOC liveries

• Scotrail Saltire - The 314s and 318s look really good in it, I think.
• SPT Carmine & Cream - The livery of my childhood. The variants carried by the 170/4s and the 334s looked particularly good. The 303s didn't look half bad in it either.
• All SWT livery variants, but the variant carried by the 158s & 159s are particularly appealing.
• CrossCountry - Suits the 170s and the HSTs particularly well, I think.
• Virgin Trains - One of the most distinctive liveries out there at the moment. It really works on the 390s.

Historic TOC liveries

• The old Virgin livery, particularly on the HSTs.
• NatEx Scotrail - I know that this example isn't exactly popular on here, but I liked it. It worked on the 156s & 170s.
• GNER - The classiest livery to appear in the past 15 years or so. The original version (without the red doors) was the best. It worked really well on the Eurostars. I'd even go so far as to say the lineup at Kings Cross won't look as good as this for a long time to come, if ever again.
• Anglia Railways - much better than the 'one' livery that followed it.
• First Great Western 'Fag Packet' - Like the NatEx Scotrail colors, this one isn't popular on here, but it was certainly distinctive. More so than what they have now.

FOC liveries

• Loadhaul - One of the best, if not the best FOC livery there's ever been.
• DB Schenker - Much better than the preceding EWS livery. It really suits the 60s and the 92s.

BR Liveries

• RES - Dunno what it is about this one. It just worked well on anything that it was applied to.
• Intercity Swallow - One of my all-time favorite liveries.
• The 'Jaffa Cake' colors - Worked well on the 309s, this one did.

 

[170401]

Best:

Any of the Intercity liveries - Executive on HST's, Swallow on everything else.
Original class 158 livery.
SWT Class 444 livery


Worst:

GNER - Bland and uninspiring compared to what went before it.
SPT Carmine and Cream - unimaginative and ugly. I'll concede that the 170's and 334s were improved a little with the refreshed version of the livery.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Current TOC liveries

[*]NatEx Scotrail - I know that this example isn't exactly popular on here, but I liked it. It worked on the 156s & 170s.
[*]GNER - The classiest livery to appear in the past 15 years or so. The original version (without the red doors) was the best. It worked really well on the Eurostars

One thing I really liked about NatEx's "post-privatisation" TOC identities was the liveries they chose and the avoidance of 'corporate' marking of territory. I was always quite a fan of Central Trains' image (though not living in their heartland might have helped!) and appreciated the Scotrail and Midland Mainline liveries for their attention to local quirks (if you know what I mean)...

Corporate liveries with only lip-service paid to local areas were generally a turn-off, though SWT did well with both the initial 'modification' of NSE livery as seen mostly on the 455s and 'slammers' and the 3 different service groups of long-distance(white)/outer-suburban (blue)/ and inner-suburban (red) variants of the 'corporate' stagecoach colours.

 

[antharro]

Old:
Intercity Swallow
Intercity Executive (Just for the "Intercity 125" text that's missing from Swallow")
NSE on class 442s, 483s (1938ts), slammers, on pretty much anything!
Old Blue/Grey Intercity
GNER
"one" stripy socks

New:
Grand Central HST / 180
(Grudgingly) SWT 444
Scotrail (the current one with the big "X")
East Coast (the newer one, not the ex-NatEx one)
Southern 377 and 313
LT Red on 483/38ts (I think the yellow front suits them)

 

[61653 HTAFC]

LT Red on 483/38ts (I think the yellow front suits them)

This, a thousand times!

Foreign trains look downright weird without the yellow fronts!

 

[fowler9]

Not at all a TOC livery but 50031 Hood in large logo blue. 50004 a close second.

As for the TOC's these days in Liverpool I actually quite like Northern, TPE is a bit fussy, Virgin on the Pendo's is nice but London Midland is very smart.

 

[backontrack]

That Class 91 looks very much like a Mk3 DVT to me

Erm, sorry.

Actually, that DVT is probably part of a Pretendolino. Which means I got mixed up again, as if that was the vehicle it would have to be a Class 90, not a 91. Here's a Pretendolino:

 

[Manchester77]

Erm, sorry.

Actually, that DVT is probably part of a Pretendolino. Which means I got mixed up again, as if that was the vehicle it would have to be a Class 90, not a 91. Here's a Pretendolino:

View attachment 18780

That's a photoshopped livery to see what it'd look like if the 90 hired for the pretendolino wore the full virgin livery. Suits it well though!

 

[Domh245]

I think that the picture is a photoshopped one - Virgin don't have a 90s anymore, although the carriages look fairly accurate! The current traction on the pretendolino set is 90034:

Although it does get swapped out from time to time

 

[gazthomas]

My absolute favourite, 1980's Scotrail livery, followed by Large Logo Blue.

 

[backontrack]

*Groans* Oh no, not again.

I have no luck.



Different livery, but it still looks sharp. Now, let's pretend this never happened...

 

[Philip Elliott]

Great Central passenger green
Great Eastern passenger blue
Great Central lined black
Midland Crimson Lake

 

[Domh245]

That is quite cool, identical train, identical location, slightly different angles yes, but other than that, the only difference is the livery (of which I prefer the older one, because it matches mainly!)

 

[Les Burrows]

I'm not a driver but I have been a user of the rail network since I was a small boy (plus my Father was a driver back in the 80's). For me it has always been the black and yellow wasp stripes of your typical Class 13.

 

[90019]

My favorites are definitely ScotRail Barbie along Central Trains - especially on the 170s.

Perhaps surprisingly, I quite liked First Scotrail's 'barbie' livery too. I'm not quite sure why. It looked particularly good on the Class 90's, I thought.

I completely agree.




Funny, that.

 

[Harbon 1]

Although I never used to like it, Intercity Executive. Suited, in my opinion, HSTs and AC/Mk3s very well, and I like it even better when mixed with corporate blue on the HST sets

Post-privatisation it has to be GNER without a doubt, but with the blue doors :P

 

[LoverOfTrains]

I really liked the old South Eastern Trains livery and Connex's Blue and Yellow livery on the 365s.

I love the livery on the new First TPE 350s.

I like the new Thameslink Great Northern livery and FCCs plain un branded blue livery when they first recived 377s from Southern.

 

[Yew]

I quite like EMT's 'express' livery on their 158's. I still think they can only have been built in the last few years, and there is a massive con to make me think they're older..

It doesnt look half bad on their HST's either, especially the bit of white on the 43..
https://scontent-b-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t31.0-8/200863_1878109546234_2485393_o.jpg

 

[Beveridges]

Surprised no ones mentioned two-tone grey. Great - especially on a tractor.