SOUTHERN RAILWAY

The Southern Railway’s post-war colour scheme was a combination of pre-war experimentation and wartime austerity. The SR wanted to modernise its image during the 1930s and experimented with a block sans serif typeface, already in use on publicity literature, for its locomotives. A body-coloured line inside the gilt or gold leaf lettering made it particularly eye-catching, especially when used against Oliver Bulleid’s new, bright malachite green. The war forced the Southern to adopt black for the whole of its fleet, despite its desire to keep express locomotives green. Assistant Stores Superintendent A.B. Macleod came to the rescue: make the letters yellow, add a touch of green to the shading and you can brighten the appearance of a black locomotive. Swap the green shading with black and

you have a consistent style for green locomotives too. Given the amount of work on developing the livery that had taken place before the war, by the time British Railways came into being, the Southern had most of its fleet in co-ordinated and uniform colour scheme. BR wouldn’t achieve such levels of standardisation until the end of the following decade!

Colour images of locomotives in Southern Railway black with ‘sunshine’ lettering are rare, so you’ll have to make do with this portrait of Urie ‘S15’ No. 498 at Nine Elms shed on August 29 1948. TREVOR OWEN/COLOUR RAIL

Only two Bulleid ‘Spam Cans’ have carried SR malachite green in preservation, and only one has the maverick designer’s new numbering scheme. No. 21C123 Blackmoor Vale shows off its bright look at Horsted Keynes on the Bluebell Railway, on November 1...