Br Blues?

Can anyone give some info on the blue used by BR back in the day vis a vis its rendition in TS?

I always understood in real life it was one colour - are the variations seen in some TS locos just errors, or were there some subtle variations in real life?

I was prompted to ask by the colour of the 45 in this excelent entry in the screen comp by tommydee



Presumably there could be fading in the real life examples, accounting for some variation, but some other TS examples come to mind - the Class 87, for example - that just look wrong - a sort of greeny acquamarine.



Surely there's a file to edit in a loco profile, where a base colour hex code can be corrected?

 

There was one colour, but obviously as paint fades, it can appear lighter. The variation in colour in TS is almost certainly unintended, and just a result of not checking properly... poorly calibrated screens etc. BR Blue was Monastral Blue. There was a prototype blue livery called XP64, which used a different blue, but the BR blue we all remember was Monastral Blue.

 

On DP Simulations is a livery patch for the Class 45 in to a proper BR Blue
https://www.dpsimulation.org.uk/
It is under rf72 reskins and about half way down the Locomotives section
The is also a reskin for 45144 Royal Signals

Peter

 

The 25s and 76s are not the same colour either. There's a reason hex codes for colour exist for computers, but even so, decent screen calibration, and a deeper understanding of ICC colour profiles, and how they work wouldn't go amiss with some people.

 

I read somewhere recently but unfortunately I can't remember where so cannot provide a source that different depots struggled to acquire exact paint code matches so often would go for "best closest match" this apparently accounted for slight different regional variations.

I'll keep looking for the source but I go off on so many tangents when searching stuff don't shoot me if I can't find it again.

I also obviously do not know if the source was correct I merely mention it because at the time I thought it interesting and if true someone else here might have more detail or confirmation about it.

 

In the original screenshot posted the woodehead 08s and the electrics are the closest to the proper colour. The Class 45s turquoise was a point of ridicule at the time of release, hence a couple of patches available.

 

Washing tended to turn the paint to a paler shade.

IIRC before BR adopted the corporate blue/grey livery there was a darker, all over blue used on mainline stock. REP/TCs and 4CORs had it although it was short lived.

 

Agree re colour.

The 76s look more like proper BR blue, but apparently in real life a lot of them had the blue just painted over the BR Green, and could look a little greeny in the sun, so if any TS locos should been greeny blue, it should have been them.

 

I think the colour of BR Blue varied a bit in practice. There's considerable variation present in colour photos from the time, and I don't think that's just due to photo chemistry and processing. The paint may have been similar out of the tin, but weathering, dirt, quality of light etc could make it appear noticeably different. In my screen shot I think the 25s are spot on, the 08s and 76s a touch too blue and the 45 a little too green.

 

Far more likely to be variations in the photographs themselves rather than the paint.

Trust me... it almost certainly is. Even slight changes in filtration while printing RA4 colour prints makes massive changes. Don't think digital is much better either, although these days it's probably the end user not being able to resist post processing.

Weathering always made the paint lighter, and more matt, yes, but it didn't change its hue.. it just got lighter. The fact is, none of those locos when sampled are Monastral Blue/Rail Blue BS 381C 114.

A little too green? It is green. It's teal green. When you take it out of context so your brain doesn't fill in the gaps... it's teal green. That Peak is this colour....


If it's not teal green there, then something's out of whack at your end. In sRGB colourspace, its 2a5354... in Adobe RGB its 3c5354.... which is another reason so many people get colours wrong, particularly in websites is that they have no idea about colour calibration, ICC profiling and how to maintain colour accuracy throughout a digital workflow. When you change colour profile, the hex value will change. If you maintain the same hex value as you change profile, you are actually changing colour, so blindly typing in a given hex value does NOT guarantee colour accuracy unless you know what colourspace it also refers to. The same applies to RGB values... The same values can yield different colours depending upon what colour profile/colourspace they refer to. Then there's modern high gamut monitors that unless profiled correctly, will massively saturate colours with un-profiled media. Unless you know what you are doing, do NOT trust anything on your screen.

Then there's lighting to consider. Increasing or decreasing lighting levels in the sim will not change chrominance (hue), but will effect luminance (brightness). You can have a darker blue of the same hue for instance. It's all subjective when it comes to luminance.

While often referred to as Monastral Blue, "Rail Blue" was created specifically for British Rail, as were many other colours specified in the 1965 corporate manual, and Rail Blue is a BS colour standard.


While there may have been small differences in paint quality from supplier to supplier, the colours wouldn't have varied much apart from what you'd get from weathering.

However.... as sampled from your screenshot, here's how they all compare.... The Peak is just way too light with too much green; The 76 and 08 are more towards violet, and the 25 is, while close, too dark, but perceptively closer.



NB. If your screen is not calibrated, and/or your browser does not honour ICC profiles properly (yes I'm looking at you Chrome), you may not see these accurately. If you are using a phone, or tablet.... forget it... they're ALL rubbish for accuracy. While too dark, your guess that the 25 was the most accurate was a good call, but it's a country mile from "spot on" While darker, from a chromaticity point of view.... it is not far out though. In game, with nothing else to compare it too however, yes... it's a pretty good representation of "BR Blue".

The above image was created using actual values as laid down in BS 381C, and prepared under sRGB IEC61966-2.1 using a £2300 Eizo ColorEdge 10 bit display with a 12bit LUT calibrated with a X-Rite i1 Display colorimeter. It's correct here... your mileage may vary.

 

Nope. The 25s are.

 

I also heard that Rail Blue also didn't turn out well in photographs.

 

That would depend on the film used, which all had, and still have drastically different characteristics. There's literally no reason I can think of why that should be true though, and all the photographs I've taken of trains in the 70s and 80s certainly never led me to believe that. There's certainly no technical reason why that should be true.

Remember.. every "film" shot you look at on the internet has been scanned, messed with, and possibly abused by a whole host of people who probably do not know what they are doing.

 

I bet even the people at DTG don't calibrate their monitors.

 

If anyone finds this useful, I've just put this together for the 4 main colours you'll see on BR Blue locos. I couldn't find a reference for the orange used in multiple working connections etc.

The file is profiled in AdobeRGB1998 (unless uploading it here strips ICC Profiles) and will only be accurate when viewed on a calibrated monitor and within the AdobeRGB1998 colourspace. Depending on your screen/profiling.. it may or may not appear accurate here (I've no idea what your browser, or this website is doing to the image). Go into Photoshop and actually use the values to create the colour.

 

Or possibly even scanned from prints! Besides the modern digital workflow calibration and profiling issues, positive film taken in say, the 70s, would have had more reliable colour reproduction than consumer film, but even then, Kodak was ‘redder’, Fujichrome more ‘blue/green’ - let along changes over subsequent decades.

 

Seeing the colours of many of these diesels, that wouldn’t surprise me in the least!

 

...or even faded prints

 

Very handy, thanks. It’s striking the optical illusion when looking at your earlier grey bounded box with the various ‘blues’, how the hue appears to vary.

In passing, I had read a railway modeller had some original Monastral which he used to paint a model diesel: he reported that while it may have looked good on the real thing, it looked ‘too dark’ on a model.

 

Colour acuity can be MASSIVELY changed by bordering colours, light temperature, or even the decor of your room. For this reason I have my room here painted in Munsell N5 Neutral grey, and have it lit with 5600k Yuji VTC series LEDs. As a professional photographer, with a graphic designer for a wife... we take colour accuracy and digital workflow discipline VERY seriously here.

Mr Pookeyhead (not my real name LOL). BA (hons), MA, MSc (real qualifications)

 

The Corporate Manual with the house colours etc can be referenced here:

http://www.doublearrow.co.uk/manual.htm

Some other interesting links on the history of BR Blue:

https://railrevisited.blogspot.com/2019/10/history-life-times-of-rail-blue.html

https://thebeautyoftransport.com/20...railways-corporate-identity-1964-1986-part-2/

Interesting that the solid dark blue on some older MUs always looked darker to me, an illusion without the grey, I guess.

 

I did see ads on DTG for graphic designers and open invitation to promote your skill to the company: maybe you should offer to do some freelance consultancy work to get their BR blues sorted!

Naturally at £1k a day...

Whatever else a DTG BR blue loco might have going for it, I struggle to want to drive a green one, unless reskinned.

 

I can't imagine the pay being particularly great. I don't like working for other people... Too may suits who know nothing about your job, telling you how to do your job. I can't imagine it's any different at DTG. Politics in the workplace make me want to rip people's heads off. I'm better off where I am

 

Besides which you’d have regulars here, moaning at you all the time

A thankless job!

 

Vulcan Productions has some good reskins of the class 45 including class 46 variants. You do need the AP class 47 sound pack which is worth getting anyway.

 

It's listed under the legacy section.... It's better than the DTG colour, but too dark IMO.

 

Just had another look at the VP Peak Reskin as I've not used it in a while... It's definitely too dark. Still better than the DTG colour.. and obviously the sound is better as it uses the AP 47 sound pack (if you have it installed)

 

Think I downloaded the 45 reskin, have yet to install, looks much better, though.

A bit dark as you say pookey, and too matt, but better than green.

 

I think maybe some of those responsible for colouring BR Blue era locos used the wrong page of The Manual:

 

Did you put that together manually in Ps, pookey, or do you have a handy program or utility that puts together samples like that?

 

Yes... manually.

 

Yoinked for future reference, thank you Ph!

 

You're welcome. The information is out there, but unless you know where to look it's not easy collating it all. The BS numbers are in the corporate manual on Double Arrows, but translating it to sRGB, CMYK and Hex is the tricky bit, so hopefully this will be helpful for people.

 

I don't know how accurate (read inaccurate) my monitor is as it's a gaming monitor but those colours look like what I'd expect them to look like in game, most helpful, I dabble with PSP and my own skins (thanks for reminding me of all my lost work ) so I'll definitely reference this in future.

 

That's why I say ignore how they look, and just use the numerical data. That way, even if your monitor is black and white!... it will be correct on other people's screens.. assuming you are working in the correct profile.

I hope it will be useful info one day.

 

If only real trains dispensed with this sort of useless silliness:



and had the courtesy to have this on the side instead:



The DLC maker's job would be so much easier!

 

Blue as a color is very ambiguous.
Sky blue is actually cyan.
Sea blue is more like green.
The 0-67-76 above says it's essentially a dark cyan with almost equal green and blue values, and about 27% brightness. Also, green values are more dominant (bright) compared to blue.
I recently noticed this when playing the old Class 101. Emphasized with lights, as the sun is yellow, meaning GR, so it ends up more green than blue, something like 20-80-60. But seriously, on screenshots involving lots of foliage, it just fits in. BR Blue is green.

Aging is another factor, in Hungary blue is widely used (and I don't like it) and it gets funny. I guess this is a pretty good showcase:


That aside, our Verkehrsrot Flirts turn pink in about a year.

Or...

 

This is an intriguing shot of a ‘BR Blue’ loco with ‘BR blue’ coaching stock in the same photo and more or less the same lighting conditions (removing many of the variables that confound other analyses of old images).

Even in this, the blues are evidently distinct: could be age, cleanliness of the vehicles as much as any variation in paint.

 

They're not that far apart.


The 33 is the darkest, but it also look quite shiny, so it could be a reflection of something dark off the shot making it look darker. The unit is very weathered. The unit also has a wide range of tones across it if you sample it. BR blue definitely gets lighter as it weathers.

 

In the shot of the 31 with the all blue coaches, they do look darker, and the locos less so.

 

I've been experimenting with colours, trying to work out why so many people seem to get BR Rail Blue so very, very wrong, and found something interesting. It is impossible to recreate it in the sRGB colourspace. In the AdobeRGB 1998 colourspace, or anything wider, no problem. However, in sRGB, it looks a more blue... and less saturated. Also, monitor gamut would obviously influence this greatly as a result. Many cheaper monitors cannot display the whole Adobe RGB colourspace. Some cheaper screens can't even cover the whole of sRGB. It is entirely possible that some of you have a set up that's simply not capable of displaying BS381C-114 Rail Blue accurately.

Depending upon what browser you are using, and whether it honours ICC colour profile, the below examples may, or may not demonstrate it well. You'd need a wide gamut monitor capable of at least 95% of Adobe RGB1998, and a browser that honours ICC colour profiles.... however, I'll try to show you.... but I'm on a £2300 10bit screen with 12bit hardware profiling capable of 100% AdobeRGB here.

Slide1: Saved in AdobeRGB1998 ICC profile


Slide2: Saved in sRGB




No matter how I try, I cannot recreate Rail Blue in the sRGB colourspace.

If the first slide looks more saturated than the second slide to you, then you have a wide gamut screen and your browser is honouring ICC profiles.

If they both look the same, then either your browser is just defaulting to a sRGB colourspace, or your monitor is only capable of sRGB colour gamut.

If the second one looks MORE saturated than the first, then you have a wide gamut screen capable of showing the true colours, but your browser is ignoring the ICC profile.

If the first one looks like BR Blue as you remember it, and the second one looks less saturated, more powdery blue, then in all likelihood, you have a decent screen and browser that honours ICC profiles.

However, for those interested in recreating Rail Blue on screen... despite most people's screens not being able to show it properly, work in AdobeRGB1998 and use the hex values I supplied above, and keep your files in AdobeRGB1998 for the whole workflow. That way, the worst than can happen is that the blue is slightly desaturated. Stripping away ICC profiles will probably result in most people seeing a very saturated blue... using sRGB will result in a dull, powdery blue cast.In all likelihood though, you'll not be able to unless your entire workflow is ICC profiled. If that is not possible, work in AdobeRGB as long as you can, then convert to sRGB before exporting to any unmanaged software as late as possible in the workflow.

Apologies for being technical, but hopefully some of you followed that... and hopefully someone who makes reskins and textures for TS followed that too.

 

Thanks, that was interesting.

Don’t most consumer monitors just offer sRGB though?

And unless the user is a photographer, they’re unlikely to profile their screen?

So how do we end up with greens-blue locos: the original developer just plucks a colour out of the air that they think looks right? Or has an original profile been mangled somehow?

 

Well.. no, that's the problem. Many of them are wide gamut, but the vast majority of their users don't know about colour profiling. It all relies on the efficacy of the applications they run. Basically, if a web browser (or any other application) works well and honours any embedded ICC profile, then everything will appear correct. If however, the browser does not, then things may appear incorrectly. Also, it's down to those that MAKE the website as well. Even with a good web browser that has excellent colour management like Firefox (but even that needs to be set by the user) a non-profiled image on a website will still not appear correctly as without a profile attached the full gamut of colours will just be pushed to the monitor with no management. A sign of this is very over-saturated colours. Unfortunately, the vast majority of users have little to no knowledge of colour management.

 

This is also correct.. or any other graphics professional who takes colour accuracy seriously. However, that's less of a problem than the lack of colour management. Shifts amongst monitors are not that great (unless the user has adjusted it from factory settings). However, the shifts due to poor profiling, or ignoring it entirely can be quite marked.

If you are referring to the "WCML Over Shap" Kuju blue, then that's just someone taking a wild guess, as I've not seen that horrible aqua blue appear as a result of any profiling issues while working all this out. In short, yes... someone just picked it and thought "That'll do".

Fortunately, the act of compressing Rail Blue into sRGB from a wider gamut doesn't look THAT bad... the Kuju blue in comparison is bloody horrible.

 

I think I updated it after you first yoinked it... you may want to discard the one you have, and yoink it again.

 

My gaming PC monitor is 99% sRGB, 90% DCI-P3, doesn't mention AdobeRGB. I've never bothered profiling it though. My older PC that I used for photography was. Wonder if my "Spyder" will work on a new Win 10 PC? Software would need updating at least...

 

Unless the monitor has an addressable LUT, it would only be software profiling any way. While colour accurate if done well, software profiling at the 8 bit level can introduce other issues like banding on smooth gradients and dithering issues. It also depends on Windows correctly loading the profile at start up, whereas hardware profiling is actually profiling the monitor. With software profiling you're actually profiling the GPU to compensate for your monitor.

Unless you are doing anything colour critical I wouldn't worry. Most monitors these days are "close enough" for casual use.

99% of sRGB would indicate that it is not a "wide gamut" screen, so you probably wouldn't notice much difference between the two examples above... if at all.

 

Here's a quick and dirty test to see how your screen/browser is handling profiles.

https://chromachecker.com/info/en/page/webbrowser

 

The Class 47s by Richard Fletcher don't look that bad
https://www.vulcanproductions.co.uk...works64-2018-12-22-11-18-57-34-origg_orig.jpg

 

Looks about right, yes.