Works Orange discussion updated

Chris Gould notes: When I was researching OF 1857 I visited Dave Williams of the Austineers. He was restoring GW 82. Amongst the bits that came with it were the brackets shown below. (We find these brackets definitely had remnants of the colour from the late 40s, and were overpainted in late 50s with Valspar 2-4 Hour Orange lacquer, before being removed in 1959-time).

GW 82’s present owner told Chris that it was repainted with VW Orange:

The 9th Duke, Freddie March told Chris that the Works cars were sprayed chrome orange, but as you can see above these vary. He had said that the colour was the Chrome Orange that is in the Reeves paint box; the one with a Greyhound as the logo:

I matched mine as best I could to a model that the Duke had made. I mixed various shades of orange and found one each side of the model’s colour. I gave them to the person who sprayed my car to get it the correct colour. He chose Renault Commercial orange [this appears to be 331 from a google search, as opposed to another Renault range 311], but as he threw away my paint samples, it couldn’t be checked against the originals.

This car image below is a good match for the colour on the Duke’s model. You can see the limitations in photography and viewing screen type in the variation between this image and another of the same car further down.

Alex Leech is planning to make a replica of No2 of the 1929 TT team and has been in contact with Chris Gould. Alex did some more research on Chrome Yellow and the Reeves paintboxes: “I have spent a time looking at Reeves paint boxes. There seems to be some variation in chrome orange between sets. Some look similar to the attached picture and others look more burnt orange to me.”

Freddy Henry also told Chris that Works cars were not all the same shade of orange.

Gould’s replica of 1929 Ulster TT 3rd place finisher (no. 5)

This RAL colour chart conveniently gives a range of oranges. Keith Dixon’s suggestion from the remains of the earliest colour on the cover panels to the lower fuel tank and scuttle on GW (which were NOT restored in the mid-50s) is the Pastel orange. GW 82 is presently painted VW Orange, if someone could give a RAL equivalent to that.

Mike Costigan adds that SCH Davis always referred to the 500 mile car as “Blood Orange red”, which we see equates to RAL 2002 Vermilion/Vermillion, or Scarlet. The Reeves paintboxes on the web appear to have the orangey shade named Vermilion.

Suffice to say, screen samples are not good enough for forensic examination. But they all give an idea of the range considered. More information needed please!

Note this cigarette cars picture. The chosen tint must have been influenced from somewhere… although it has the stripe of the radiator L&N car so perhaps it is even influenced by buff or cream.

This card comes from Mike Costigan:

Note other orange-bodied OF plates used for their familiarity to the Austin Works plates of their day:

OF 6462 is a narrow body Ulster rep created by Hutchings.

OF 8893 is now the ex-Goodacre development Ulster body – this perhaps has valuable information in the samples from when first found.