They were delivered in Brunswick, mainly unlined with whiskers. They had white roof domes, and at least on the first set a lot of the underframe equipment was in silver. All were eventually lined as they passed through shops, and yellow panels replaced whiskers from about '64.

51332 was lined and had a change of buffers (they were square when new) during it's first works visit.

While rubbing down 51382 for repainting at the Midland Railway Centre in 2003, the original lining was measured as-
Top: 1" wide, 5" from lower gutter edge.
Bottom: cream 1 1/2" with 1/16th black edges, 6 1/4" from lower window rubber.

In '67 a few received the all-blue livery with small yellow panel, white cab dome and red buffer beam, umber underframe, very small numbering and the new BR logo on the cab doors.

Soon though the standard blue livery appeared, with full yellow ends. The cab dome became the same colour as the roof, and black buffer beams/underframe, and standard numbering etc. This was kept until the vehicles were refurbished, commencing in 76/7, which also saw the four character headcodes plated over. Previous to that they had been painted over or displayed two white dots.

From about 1980 they started appearing in blue/grey livery, with the inner ends blue.

Latterly they have also appeared in Regional Railways livery (Haymarket sets) and Network South East, and one set appeared in Chocolate & Cream for the GWR 150th anniversary celebrations (51368 / 59520 / 51410 as T305, B430 and 117 305).

 

The brown set at Matlock Peter, Lincolnshire & East Yorkshire Transport Review