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.
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"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"
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90017 at Rugby in "Res" Livery
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90049 at Manchester in
"FL Grey" livery
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90022 at Leeds in revised "RfD" Livery
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90008 at Crewe in "Inter-City" livery
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90032 at Carlisle in "Mainline" livery
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90006 at Norwich in original "One" livery
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90021 (FSR) & 90003 (NXEA)
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90008 at Lime Street in "Virgin" livery
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90003 at Norwich in revised "One" livery
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90041 nth of Milton Keynes in "FL Green" livery
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90024 at Shenfield in "FSR" livery
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90034 at Watford Junction in "EWS" livery
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90130 at Carlisle in "SNCF" livery
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90028 at Carlisle in "Belgium" livery
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90029 at Leeds in "DB" livery
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90019 at Glasgow Central in "Res" livery
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90136 at Carlisle in an experimental "RfD" livery
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90025 at Doncaster in original "BR RfD" livery
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90037 at North Berwick in "EWS" livery
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90024 at Euston in an unbranded "GNER" livery
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90034 at Leeds with a revised "RfD" livery
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