Respected friends, My earlier posting on the subject has a lot of grammatical errors and missing of words. On reading the posting I found the changes made were not saved and got posted. I paste below the corrected copy. Sorry for the oversight.Gopalakrishnan 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 at Mangalore Railway station. So inside seating andpainting also will have orange reflection. Earlier coaches are mainly blue in colour. The orange colour gives more external appearance. Probably while going for repainting all old bogies may also berepainted in orange colour on body. There are also possibilities of next batchof Vandebharat train with parrot green and another batch with sindoor colourmay 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 was told. Later while coming to Madras (presentChennai) I could see the beautiful coaches manufactured and kept aligned near Villivakkam in a railway strip. Some ofthe coaches were for import even at thattime. Only steam engines were there, it was common ashes from coal fall on body, eye whilelooking forward. .. When stripesstarted it was yellowish in colour. Allidentification letters were also in yellow colour, the same yellow colour usedto mark coach numbers, type of coach etc. Most Goods wagons still have dark brown colour thoughsome come with grey and light green colours on the body. When Blue mountain express was introduced it had blue asbody colour. When Brindavan express was introduced it had green as body colour. The reputation of Blue mountain expressstill continues with AC coaches whereas Brindavan express has lost oldprestige. It simply runs as a slow express train without AC chair car, afterthe introduction of Chennai- Bangalore Double Decker express. 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 a decision was taken to have the colour of thecoaches depend on the type of train. Socoaches again got repainted in the order whether they are express, superexpress, passenger etc. Most of the express trains came with painting from windowupwards in yellow colour. 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 body of a 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 engine betweenMangalore 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/140700293.2346677.1693641930411%40mail.yahoo.com.
