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Strangest livery/train combination?

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owidoe

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For me, it's definitely the last working class 03 living out the last of its days in First Capital Connect livery.
1280px-FCC_03179_at_NVR.jpg
 
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Ianno87

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A Class 66 in BR Large Logo livery still looks fantastically odd to me!
 

Flange Squeal

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The SWT outer suburban blue applied to a Class 121 for route learning, and three "thunderbird" Class 73s, always seemed like an interesting mix of a then-new Desiro livery applied to some "heritage" traction.

swt121a.jpg

73109des.jpg
 

Towers

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While, conversely, Southern's livery seemed to suit their 73 perfectly!
 

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RUK

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For me, something a bit similar to the OP - the Porterbrook purple/white/grey liveries on any locomotives. Tornado with the modern National Express logo on the tender was a bit incongruous as well, but it was just a relatively small part of the livery, so not the strangest livery ever.
 

Atomix330

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The lack of yellow warning panels on the Class 345s is jarring. The black and white fronts of the 717s is similarly weird - 700s and 707s look reassuringly normal.
 

4-SUB 4732

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Those terrible wraps FCC did on Green 319s in the end. The Switzerland red one, and a LycaMobile (?) white one...
 

xotGD

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For me, something a bit similar to the OP - the Porterbrook purple/white/grey liveries on any locomotives. Tornado with the modern National Express logo on the tender was a bit incongruous as well, but it was just a relatively small part of the livery, so not the strangest livery ever.
Deltic 16 in purple. Bizarre.
 

65477

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If an operator has a corporate image then I see nothing strange in any of their stock carrying that livery.. I can even understand freight haulers painting engines in the livery of their customers, but it can be strange if those engines work inappropriate services. A few years ago GBRF allocated at least one of their white lock's to RHTT work. A very odd period to me was when the GEML had hired in class 90's and mark 3 coaches some odd combinations then.

As the op does not seem to exclude preserved railways there are plenty of possibilities for people to suggest there.
 

Strathclyder

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Was that genuine or 'Photoshop'? (Genuine question, I have never seen it).
Real (linked photo from the Keith Long Flickr stream) by the looks of this.

 

Furrysquid

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Class 139s always look a bit odd, but in the current livery they look even ... odder. (It's a body shape that really needs some horizontal stripes, imho.)
 

Spartacus

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There were a few 08s turned out in Intercity livery, complete with Swallows.
 

Cowley

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I’ll go with this:


From this thread:

 

RUK

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Was that genuine or 'Photoshop'? (Genuine question, I have never seen it).
Real (linked photo from the Keith Long Flickr stream) by the looks of this.

Yes, it was real - National Express sponsored it for a while.
 

VEP3417

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connex tried out a blue upper band at one point.....
probably to see if they could save money but just repainting the bottom of nse livery :lol:
 

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Towers

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pdeaves

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connex tried out a blue upper band at one point.....
probably to see if they could save money but just repainting the bottom of nse livery :lol:
That was standard on their 365 fleet and quite smart if I may say so. I don't remember it on any 'slammers'; that does indeed look a little strange.
 

LRV3004

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I can think of a few examples; a few of which are “what might have been” cases!
* BR Green, Loadhaul, Intercity and GBRf liveries on a few Class 50s
* D5054 in Loadhaul livery
* BR Green, large logo and Trainload sector liveries on some of the GBRf 66s
* “Police” liveries on 37093 and 47829
* “Celebrations” livery on 47627
* Large logo on 40145 (renumbered to 40445)
* The unique dark blue livery on 31289 (Northampton and Lamport Railway)
* Porterbrook liveries on 47807, 47817, D9016 and 87002
* LNWR “blackberry black” on 87019
* “Caledonian” blue on 86245 (effectively Virgin Trains but with blue instead of red).
* The “Hornby” liveried HST power car.
Many others out there no doubt which I’ve forgotten, and also undoubtedly many opinions on each of these liveries!
 

Cowley

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I can think of a few examples; a few of which are “what might have been” cases!
* BR Green, Loadhaul, Intercity and GBRf liveries on a few Class 50s
* D5054 in Loadhaul livery
* BR Green, large logo and Trainload sector liveries on some of the GBRf 66s
* “Police” liveries on 37093 and 47829
* “Celebrations” livery on 47627
* Large logo on 40145 (renumbered to 40445)
* The unique dark blue livery on 31289 (Northampton and Lamport Railway)
* Porterbrook liveries on 47807, 47817, D9016 and 87002
* LNWR “blackberry black” on 87019
* “Caledonian” blue on 86245 (effectively Virgin Trains but with blue instead of red).
* The “Hornby” liveried HST power car.
Many others out there no doubt which I’ve forgotten, and also undoubtedly many opinions on each of these liveries!

There’s some good stuff in your list.
A couple more to add from
preservation sector:

Class 15 D8233 in red stripe Railfreight livery…


And Hymek D7017 in ‘Dutch’.
Not a fan of fictional liveries usually, but this looked really good!

 

james60059

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For me, the early years of privatisation with the combination of new liveries mixed with Intercity branded stock, such as Virgin/Intercity, or even when operators changed their liveries with trains running a mixture of old/new liveries.
 

Christmas

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When First ScotRail first took over, they painted a 170 in the new livery. The problem was that the vinyls went right over the driver's cab windows! It was swiftly altered. I can't find an image of it though.
 

RUK

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A Class 66 in BR Large Logo livery still looks fantastically odd to me!
I think it looks really good. Reminiscent of a Class 50 in the same livery.

THC
Perhaps I'm completely wrong here, but it looks to me like the Class 66's solebar is much higher than on any British Rail-era diesel that I can think of, so the older/British Rail/"heritage" liveries on them look a little bit odd in their proportions to me. They do look good, though.

* Porterbrook liveries on 47807, 47817, D9016 and 87002
87002 in the version of the Porterbrook livery with all purple with only the logo in grey/silver is the only Porterbrook livery that looks ok to me, though it looks kinda more European than British to me with the purple colour for some reason, and the white window frames look a bit odd to me - the version with the big silver band and stretched "Porterbrook" writing on it was the worst Porterbrook livery, IMO. There was also 57601 in its unique version of the Porterbrook livery, which kinda looks ok or strange to me, depending on what mood I'm in.
 
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Nova1

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This was one of the more strange liveries I've seen, when WMR were first awarded the franchise this was their proposed liveries.
1635199921579.png

Then they ran this for a little bit (which I quite liked)

1635199961224.png
 

Mat17

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For me it's got to be the half vinyls on the ex-Arriva Trains Northern transpennine sets when they went over to First Group in 2003/4.

The top half in the original maroon livery of Northern Spirit with the top of the italic N still showing, the bottom half with purple vinyl.

The other livery which always struck me as quaint was the 156s masquerading as 158s in Regional Rail Express livery.
 
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