British Rail road vehicle liveries.

Hi David. A cursory look through my bookshelves came up with a variety of shades of yellow British Rail road vehicles. This accords with my memory. New vehicles were indeed very bright yellow, perhaps a tad less dark than the loco front yellow applied in the seventies. Even on locos ex works there could be a slight difference depending on which works undertook the refurbishment.

Possible sources for your road vehicle yellow are:

1. Railmatch 304 - Pre-1984 front warning panel yellow
2. Railmatch 202 - engineer's yellow
3. Railmatch 2304 - yet another warning panel yellow

This list is not exhaustive but it does hint at the huge variety of yellows available to the modeller. Choose any one of these listed (I would go for the 202) and then apply light weathering to fade the colour so that if you have a selection of BR road vehicles they will not all be the same. Rubbing on a light grey or white weathering powder and sealing with matt varnish is a posible way forward. There are many other techniques that can be explored and by no means am I an expert weatherer (if that word didn't exist it does now). As in all things practice makes perfect.

To illustrate how creative you can be I think of the advice given by Iain Rice in his book, "Railway Modelling - The Realistic Way" where, on page 273 he has a photo of a Gresley kitchen coach that is spray-painted with an aerosol of car touch-up paint from Halfords - VW Gambia Red. It is perfect. So why not check out your local car accessory shop.

Basically, if the yellow looks right to you it is right.

Best regards .................. Greyvoices (alias John)