5AT Livery Options
Many livery options for the 5AT have been created by artist Robin Barnes whose beautiful paintings are presented elsewhere on this website. In December 2006, at the time of the York conference on "Modern Steam", Robin presented the project with a set of new illustrations including five side elevations of the locomotive coloured in different livery options. Serious consideration of the question of livery options was forced on the "Leading Group" the following month when William Powell, a Model Making student at Bournemouth Arts Institute, offered to make a 1:30 model of the 5AT for his final year project. Accordingly, a ballot was held amongst 15 leading supporters of the project, in which each was asked to nominate his first three preferences (in order) from the first nine options illustrated below.
The result was a very close-run thing until fortuitously Robin produced a new painting (Option 10) which he delivered to Chris Newman and Malcolm Cluett in Sydney, Australia in March 2007 (see Photo pages), and as soon as this option was made available to the voters, its elegant blue with orange stripe and bold 5AT lettering on the tender became the near-unanimous favourite.
Unfortunately, William ran out of time and was forced to finish his model in matt white (see 5AT Models page), so presentation of a model in full livery model will have to await his or someone else's later efforts. Notwithstanding, the vote was not unanimous, and one or two of the voters urged consideration of more radical colour schemes, including one based Virgin's Pendolino trains. That prompted the suggestion that all supporters of the project should be invited to present their ideas in colour rather than in words, and a "colouring-in" template was prepared to facilitate the task using Photoshop or similar software.
Mike Horne was first to take up the challenge and produced a very elegant illustration of his Pendolino styling idea, as shown below:
Mike Atkinson has also taken up the challenge (as of 12 Aug 2007) by sending in several livery suggestions based on "classical" styles that appeal to him. He describes his seven livery suggestions as "one for each part of the country, one for Cross Country and one for Rail Freight. You will find that I have taken inspiration from the Big Four and the Caledonian Railway, to produce 5AT ~ Caledonian, 5AT ~ Great Western, 5AT ~ North Eastern, 5AT ~ Rail Freight, 5AT ~ Southern, 5AT ~ Midland and Northern and 5AT ~ Cross Country. I have done this because I am not too fond of the chosen livery of Blue with 5AT in large letters on the tender, I believe it does not do the locomotive justice and does not make it look British. I am not saying my designs are any better or any worse, but of course they are based on British liveries, thus have an air of classic about them. I hope you like them!" And indeed I do! Mike's livery ideas can be seen by clicking here.
Jonathan Newton of Victoria, Australia, has also added his suggestion based on a Victorian Railways S class locomotive, which can be viewed by clicking here.
Andrew George, also of Australia, has added some further suggestions based on four liveries of past and present railways in Australia and the UK. These may be viewed by clicking here.
If any other readers would like to submit their own livery ideas, please feel free to use one of the blank templates below and forward it to webmaster@5at.co.uk. (The lower template has the locomotive's framework etc precoloured in grey). To copy a template onto your computer, "right click" on the image and select the "Save Picture As" option.
Note: the actual size of these templates is much larger than shown on this page. Their lines will appear clearer when the images are displayed at full size. Left click on each image to see it in full-size.
