WHITE and ORANGE Dear friends,
This writing is based on arrival of eight coaches with engine of mainly orange colour painted VANDE BHARATH express, first batch of mainly orange colour on body from ICF Chennai. So inside seating and painting also will have orangereflection. Earlier coaches are mainly bluein colour. The orange colour gives more external appearance. Probably while go for repainting all old bogies mayalso be repainted in orange colour on body. There are also possibilities ofnext batch of Vandebharat train with parrot green and another batch withsindoor colour may arrive. These colours are also beautiful. In my boyhood days there was no discrimination in bodycolours. All trains had dark browncolour body. No stripes. Coaches with wooden body were there, but mostly withsteel body. I have recollection of coach numbers etc. written in white colour. Sitting benches and sleeper berths were with woodenplanks. I studied in middle school class about first five yearplan, in which the ICF factory at Chennai, Perambur for building coaches were told.Later while coming to Madras (present Chennai) I could see the beautifulcoaches manufactured and kept aligned near Villivakkam in a railway strip. Some of the coaches were importeven at that time. Only steam engines were there, it was common ashes from coal fall on body, eye whilelooking forward. .. When stripesstarted it was yellow colour. All identification letters were also in yellowcolour, the same yellow colour used to mark coach numbers, type of coach etc. Most Goods wagons still have dark brown colours thoughsome come with grey and light green colours on the body. When Blue mountain express was introduced it had blue bodycolour. When Brindavan express was introduced it had green body colour. Thereputation of Blue mountain express still continues with AC coaches whereasBrindavan express has lost old prestige. It simply runs as a slow express trainwithout AC chair car after the introduction of Chennai- Bangalore Double Deckerexpress. About a decade back or still earlier, decision wastaken by railway ministry to change thecolour of all coaches to light blue. All coaches when gone for painting,repainted in light blue colour. Later decision a decision was taken to have the colourof the coaches depend on the type of train. So coaches again got repainted in the order whether they are express,super express, passenger etc. Most of the express trains came with paintingfrom window in yellow colour upwards. Later ministry started permitting Companyadvertisements in the coaches. It became difficult even to note the coach number. Still theadvertisements continue in double decker trains between Chennai and Bangalore.We can watch actor Jeyaram in Ramraj cotton dhoti advertisement covering most of the coach. Similarly inner wear banianadvertisements. Engines changed from steam to diesel by about 1975’s. Engines changed to electrichauling after electrification of theroutes. Still certain routes have dieselhauling. About a month back my daughter told me about the travel in the train with diesel between Mangalore and Bangalore. Seats changed from planks to cushion. The width of thecushion seat/berth and depth depends onthe type of class. The elimination of first class and second class andappearance of 3rd AC was a major change. While thinking about body stripe colours, nationalisedand other banks also use some uniform stripecolours in their offices for general painting and counters. Bank of Baroda uses orange stripe colour and lightyellow as major colour . State bank of India uses blue colour stripes and whiteas major colour. Canara bank uses sky blue colour stripes. Karur Vaisya bankuses dark green colour stripes to quote some. Indian overseas bank also useslight blue colour stripes with light yellow as main colour. Gopalakrishnan 2-9-23 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/1982814254.2333563.1693639700842%40mail.yahoo.com.
