Chocolate and cream livery

Chocolate and cream was the historic carriage livery of the Great Western Railway, a rich brown below the waist with a cream upper panel. From 1956 British Railways allowed the Western Region to restore it to the coaching stock of its principal named expresses, making the Western the only region permitted to carry a distinct regional carriage livery in place of the standard maroon. The result was that a train such as the Cornish Riviera Express again ran in the colours its predecessors had worn before nationalisation.

A Great Western colour

The scheme belonged to the Great Western Railway, which had used chocolate and cream carriages for much of its history, with a break in the interwar years when a plainer brown was tried before the two-tone livery returned. It was closely associated with the company’s named expresses out of Paddington, and it survived in the public memory long after the GWR itself had passed into British Railways at nationalisation. When the region was allowed to bring it back, it was reviving a colour scheme that many travellers still thought of as the proper dress of a West of England express.

Restored from 1956

From 1956 the Western Region applied chocolate and cream to the coaching stock of its principal named trains, including the Cornish Riviera Express, the Bristolian, and the Torbay Express. Ordinary Western Region stock remained in the standard maroon, so the livery marked out the flagship services rather than the whole fleet. The brown lower panels and cream upper panels were lined out, and the effect was deliberately traditional, of a piece with the region’s retention of Great Western engines, nameplates, and working methods.

The only regional livery

No other region was granted a comparable exception. The Southern kept green for its locomotives but used standard coaching liveries, and the London Midland, Eastern, North Eastern, and Scottish regions all ran maroon coaching stock. That the Western alone carried its old company colours on its carriages is one of the clearest signs of how strongly the Great Western identity persisted into British Railways days. The livery lasted on named-train stock until the region fell into line with national coaching schemes in the 1960s.