After several trials British Railways selected a livery of crimson and cream for its' mainline passenger coaches and plain crimson for suburban and parcels coaches.
It takes a very long time to build and repaint a fleet of passenger coaches, offering a great variety of coach stock for modelling this time period. The new BR standard mark 1 coaches were coming into service alongside the older pre-BR coaches, many still painted in their old company colours. Slowly the company colours disappear as until 1957, when BR changed to lined maroon for new repaints. Even then the crimson and cream livery was only slowly displaced.

Train formation note - Two gangway systems were used by Britains railways, the GWR and LMS fitting the so-called standard gangway, while the LNER, SR and BR fitted the larger Pullman gangway. While the two gangways could be connected using adaptors this was inconvenient, so a number of ex-LNER Gresley buffet cars were transferred to the Western to provide buffet service on trains formed of the new Mk.1 coaches.

All of these coaches are Era 4 models. Details of the periods covered by the era numbers can be found here.