‘Stepney’ on the Bluebell Railway (In LB&SCR ‘Stroudley Improved Engine Green’ livery).

Quite why William Stroudley’s delightful ‘yellow ochre’ livery became known as ‘Improved Engine Green’, is a question open to much conjecture. Ranging from the idea that ‘engine green’ had become a generic term used in locomotive workshops regardless of colour, to suggestions that the LB&SCR Locomotive Superintendent was actually colour blind and no one at Brighton Works had the heart (or nerve?) to tell him!

Regardless of its origins the classic Victorian colour scheme sits well on the preserved ‘Stepney’, in this view taken on the Bluebell Railway at Sheffield Park, sometime in the 1980’s. (Photo by Ian Edwards).