Liveries

The locomotives were delivered in BR green, with half yellow panels applied from D5832 onwards and retro-applied to the rest of the fleet. Many went on to run in green with full yellow ends namely.

BR blue was applied to the full fleet, and then railfreight grey was the first major break from this when 31252 appeared in the new livery in March 1985. This was a tweak to include a red solebar strip from 1987.

The Trainload liveries appeared from 1988, with Trainload Coal the most common (13 locomotives), followed by Trainload Petroleum (ten), Trainload Construction (five) and Railfreight Distribution (one – 31160).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s more new liveries appeared, such as the new BR general grey - or Departmental grey, InterCity Mainline and ‘Dutch’ grey/yellow for those locomotives employed on infrastructure trains. A real oddball was 31116 (named

RAIL after this magazine), which gained a striking yellow and grey livery with red bands.

The attractive Regional Railways colours was bestowed on five Class 31/4s. Transrail and Mainline Freight liveries appeared on just one locomotive each, and EWS painted 31466 in its colours for the Toton Open day in August 1998.

Fragonset applied its black livery to six of its locomotives, but hire contracts to other operators led to 31190 and 31601 appearing in Railtrack blue and lime green, while 31190 also had a spell in West Coast Railways maroon and 31601 appeared in a shocking Wessex Trains pink.

Network Rail applied an equally garish all over yellow to its four Class 31s, with FM Rail’s 31602 following suit. In more recent times Devon & Cornwall Railways green was seen on three ex-Fragonset locomotives and then 31601 was painted in the DC Rail grey - which was very similar to the BR General livery.