page_title: British Rail Class 52
section_title: Corporate scheme
hierarchical_section_title: British Rail Class 52 / Liveries / Corporate scheme
caption_attribution_description: Diesel hydraulic locomotive 'Western' class 52 No. D1005 "Western Venturer" having brought a train up from Cornwall, departs Paddington for servicing and turning at Old Oak Common on 18 May 1976.
context_page_description: The British Rail Class 52 was a class of 74 Type 4 diesel-hydraulic locomotives built for the Western Region of British Railways between 1961 and 1964. All were given two-word names, the first word being "Western" and thus the type became known as Westerns.
context_section_description: After the adoption of Rail Blue with full yellow ends in 1966 (D1048 was the first of the class painted in this livery in 1966), for some unexplained reason a small batch of locomotives (D1017, D1030, D1036, D1037, D1043, D1047 and D1057) received this variant married to small yellow warning panels; D1030 carried red buffer beams for a short while. All other repaints were with full yellow ends which extended from the body line above the buffer beam up to the base of the window frames, along the sill of the cab-side windows onto the vertical end reveal. The valance above the cab windows on the front was also painted yellow, leaving the window frames in their base aluminium. The drive to repaint the locomotives in Rail Blue was outstripped by the safety directive dictating full yellow ends for all powered vehicles and some locomotives ran for a time with their original maroon bodies and full yellow ends.
  The last locomotive to be repainted into Rail Blue was D1046, outshopped from Swindon in May 1971. Some early photographs of the blue livery give it a more metallic shade which is even more evident on the locomotives with small yellow panels. This however is possibly a photographic anomaly with colour film or due to printing techniques.
  It is commonly accepted amongst Western enthusiasts in recent years that none of the class or any other British Rail locomotive of the period were ever painted with a metallic paint. However, several publications refer to initial painting in blue as being "chromatic blue" and published images do show a metallic sheen and lighter shade of blue than the standard Rail Blue.
caption: D1005 Western Venturer in BR blue.
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