Over the last week I have been very much enjoying raiding the local hedgerows for blackberries, and this year did not disappoint! The hedges round here are always bursting with blackberries at this time of year, which is good as it is by far my favourite fruit. So having gorged on far too many apple (from our garden) & blackberry pies, my thoughts turned to having some local blackberry producers existing in the timeline of my railway.
My original plan was to nickname the AK&ALR "The Plum Line" due to the livery (see next section), the fame of plums being grown in Worcestershire and most importantly it kind of works as a bad pun. But honestly I much prefer the sound of "The Blackberry Line" (and yes, I know one existed in real life with this nickname!) so as Worcestershire is a county known for it's fruit production I feel it is reasonable to have some fictional large scale blackberry growers in my version of the county.
Please address any concerns about accuracy to:
AK&ALR Complaints Department,
Rule 1,
Fictional Street,
My Version of Areley Kings,
My Version of Worcestershire
DY do you care if it's wrong?
😉
Liveries aka I finally made up my mind!!!!
Hoorah and huzzah I finally made up my mind about what liveries I want! I know, what sorcery is this me making up my mind? Madness that's what!
AK&ALR
Locomotives will be in a sort of plum (?) purple with cream lining, roughly based on this picture:
Coaches will be two-tone with the purple on the bottom half and cream on the top half, while goods stock will be a mixture of LSWR Holly Green (vans) and GWR Dark Grey (opens/flats/etc).
M&RR
This was originally going to be the livery for the AK&ALR, but I feel it fits narrow gauge better. The locomotives will be in a darkish yellow with black lining, similar to this (knocked up quickly on MS Paint):
Goods stock will be in LSWR/SR Freight Brown, with the brake vans probably having the same red ends as LSWR brake vans.
Thanks for reading, and go out blackberry picking before the autumn weather ruins them! 👍
- Alex
