BR maroon, a deep crimson lake, became the standard colour of British Railways coaching stock during the 1950s and, in time, the house colour of the London Midland Region. It was a direct inheritance from the Midland Railway, whose crimson lake carriages had set the tone for the London Midland and Scottish Railway after 1923, and through the LMS it passed to British Railways. By the end of the decade a maroon rake behind a green engine was the ordinary sight of a main-line express on much of the network.
A Midland inheritance
The colour begins with the Midland Railway, which painted its carriages and its locomotives in a crimson lake so distinctive that it became a hallmark of the company. When the Midland formed the largest part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway at the 1923 Grouping, its crimson carriage livery was adopted as LMS standard, and it survived the years of wartime austerity to be carried into nationalisation. British Railways first went through a period of two-tone carmine and cream coaching stock, but by the mid-1950s it had returned to a single deep maroon very close to the old Midland and LMS shade.
Standard coaching stock
Maroon was applied to the standard BR Mark 1 coaches then being built in large numbers, and to the older Big Four carriages still in service. Lined out in straw and black on the panelled vehicles, it gave the ordinary express train a settled and uniform appearance across most of the country. The chief exception was the Western Region, which from 1956 restored its own chocolate and cream to named-train stock, described in the chocolate and cream feature.
The London Midland Region colour
Maroon carried a second meaning as the regional colour of the London Midland Region, the successor to the LMS on the West Coast lines. Station running-in boards, signs, and later some locomotive liveries used the maroon as an identifying colour, continuing the association between the crimson shade and the old Midland heartland. In this way a colour that had begun on the carriages of one Victorian company came to stand for a whole region of the nationalised railway.
- Awdry, C. (1990) Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies, PSL, for the Midland and LMS inheritance.
- Standard British Railways carriage livery references for the Mark 1 coaching schemes.
- Ian Allan ABC of British Railways Coaching Stock, for the vehicles carrying the livery.