LMS Route: Evesham to Birmingham

Salford Priors station: mrsp1420

An undated view looking along the platform towards Evesham with the goods shed partly visible on the right. The LMS 'Hawkseye' or 'Target' station nameboard can be seen on the right. The two upright posts were sculptured so that the top section was thinner adjacent to the nameboard. As can be seen the top horizontal rail was also scuptured. In this instance, the verticals posts have been repaired, due to their rotting at ground level, by the addition of another post fixed on the outside. When new the station nameboards, that is the 'Hawkseye' or 'Target' part on the board, were originally painted yellow with black letters & had fragments of glass embedded in the face to help the signs stand out at night. The Midland used a very attractive livery for buildings, which was used on everything other than signal boxes. A very pale cream called 'Denby Pottery Cream' was used for planking, valencing, etc, with a reddish brown officially called 'Venetian Red' for ironwork, framing etc. Doors were painted in a deep red, almost certainly the same colour as was used on loco's and coaches. Window frames were painted white. Poster boards were back with white framing & lettering, either 'MIDLAND' or 'MIDLAND RAILWAY'. Station signs & running in boards were deep blue with white lettering & framing. The well known diagonally planked wooden fencing was always creosoted, never painted so should be finished on models in black or very dark brown; gates however were cream. Lamposts and the like were finished in the cream & brown. Signal boxes had a different colour scheme to make them stand out on the lineside; the planking was painted Lemon Chrome Yellow, as were signal posts, with the framing, stairs, guttering, finials etc. finished in the same Venetian Red as on the other buildings. Window frames and internal walls were white. The BS 381C references for these colours are 354 for the Yellow and 412 for Venetian Red. The yellow faded over time to a 'Cotswold Stone' buff shade. The nameboards was deep blue with white lettering & edging.

The LMS clearly did not see imposing a new corporate image in its stations as a priority, as until 1936 it continued to use the pre group colour schemes, gaining a reputation for shabby & run down looking stations in the process. In practice virtually no stations were repainted by the LMS before 1936, though now that the Furness & NSR came into the Western section they would have used LNWR colours if there was any repainting. Even after the new standard schemes were introduced it took time before all the stations had been treated, so any modeller wanting to represent the LMS pre-war would be best advised to use the colour scheme of the appropriate pre-grouping company but with LMS poster boards. The company began thinking about a new livery for buildings in 1931, when standard colours of 'stone' and 'brown' were introduced for all signal boxes, the stone colour being used on planking and the brown everywhere else. However, the S&T department did not take over responsibility for painting signal boxes until 1933 so for two years things were a bit hit and miss. Internally the brown was used up to dado level and the stone above, the interior of the roof and the window frames being white. Despite this new standard scheme some boxes on the Central Wales line was painted cream & green to match the stations in 1937 - it was a long way from headquarters! The photograph below of Embsay box shows this livery beautifully. The nameboard was yellow with black lettering. Stations did not receive a standard painting scheme until 1936, a full thirteen years after the LMS was formed. Two light colours were introduced, 'cream' and 'Portland Stone' which were to be used with one of three darker shades, 'brown', 'red' and 'green'. The red was a dark shade similar to Midland read as used on LMS loco's and coaches, and the brown was very similar to the former LNWR colour. The majority of stations were repainted using the red or brown as the darker shade, with the green supposedly being reserved for bucolic stations in the middle of nowhere with the view that the buildings would blend in better with the rural landscape. Poster boards on the LMS were always black with the framing and lettering in white; station signs were similarly painted. Running in boards were white on black until 1936, when black lettering on a yellow background was introduced along with the new 'target' nameboards.

The information on the station colour schemes is courtesy of Peter Smith of Station Colours.

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