Introduction: 
 

During the 21 year history of class 90s, the fleet has seen a staggering 17 different liveries of various shades and colour. However, of those 17, only 7 liveries remain in active use today (late 2009), with the other 10 having become either obsolete as ownership or branding has changed or through a lack of work resulting in 1/4 of the fleet being stored. As new, there were three main liveries applied to the class 90 fleet; 


  • 90001 to 90025 Inter-City Swallow
  • 90026 to 90036 Inter-City Mainline
  • 90037 to 90050 RfD (freight) 

The original liveries remained in place for the first few years before change was inevitable following the slow break up of BR. The newly formed ‘Rail Express Systems' (Res) resulted in 90016 to 90020 being transferred to the PXLE pool operating mail trains and repainted into Res livery.The next batch of repaints came after 90021 to 90025 were transferred to RfD from Inter-City - these were painted into the original Rfd house colours, which left 90026 to 90036 in Inter-City Mainline. However, these suffered the same fate as 90021 to 90025 i.e. painted into the same colour scheme. Interestingly at the time of being stored, 90025 and 90027 still carried the original BR RfD livery as well as a handful of 90s still sporting the revised RfD paint job. The sole remaining 90s left in their original BR livery were 90001 to 90015 sporting the iconic swallow "Inter-City" colours, which remained in place until Virgin Trains took over the operations of the West Coast from April 1997 onwards.
 

In 1992, as part of a rail freight exhibition, 90022 was named "Freight Connection" and retained the original RfD livery, but this did not last and so 90022 was soon outshopped in a revised livery which it sported until it was stored in 2006. The revised RfD house colours adopted for 90022 was applied to other members of the class - notably 90021, 90023, 90024, 90034, 90033 and 90038. In parallel with the naming of 90022 - 90028, 90029 and 90030 were painted into three new European liveries; notably Belgium for 90028, DB for 90029 and SNCF for 90030. These three liveried class 90s were also named Freight connection, but in their appropriate European language.
 

At the same time, an experimental RfD livery was applied to 90036 - numbered 90136 at the time and later reverting back to a 90/0. This livery survives to the present day in 2010, albeit slightly modified with EWS branding. After the privatisation of BR in 1993, a number of new liveries appeared on several class members including Virgin Trains for 90001 to 90015 from 1997 making the Inter-City livery obsolete. Many of the private sector liveries born out of privatisation still exist, but most are now obsolete.

 

"The class 90 fleet have carried 17 different liveries during its 21 year history. A small sample of some those iconic paint jobs are displayed below"

 


90017 at Rugby in "Res" Livery

90017Rugby.jpg


90049 at Manchester in "FL Grey" livery

90049MAN5.JPG


90022 at Leeds in revised "RfD" Livery

90022LDS2.jpg


90008 at Crewe in "Inter-City" livery

class90008.jpg


90032 at Carlisle in "Mainline" livery

90032Carlisle.jpg


90006 at Norwich in original "One" livery

webassets/90006NRW190406.JPG


90021 (FSR) & 90003 (NXEA)

webassets/90021and90003LST.JPG


90008 at Lime Street in "Virgin" livery

90008LIV1.jpg


90003 at Norwich in revised "One" livery

DSCF2441.JPG


90041 nth of Milton Keynes in "FL Green" livery

90041MKC.jpg


90024 at Shenfield in "FSR" livery

90024Shenfield1.jpg


90034 at Watford Junction in "EWS" livery

90034WFJ1.JPG


90130 at Carlisle in "SNCF" livery

90130CARStn.jpg


90028 at Carlisle in "Belgium" livery

90028CAR1.jpg


90029 at Leeds in "DB" livery

90129LDS.jpg


90019 at Glasgow Central in "Res" livery

90019GLC_edited.JPG


90136 at Carlisle in an experimental "RfD" livery

90136CARStn.jpg


90025 at Doncaster in original "BR RfD" livery

90025DON1b.jpg


90037 at North Berwick in "EWS" livery

90037NBW2.jpg


90024 at Euston in an unbranded "GNER" livery

90024GNER1.jpg


90034 at Leeds with a revised "RfD" livery

90034LDS2.jpg