Cl.142 in chocolate and cream livery - known as a Skipper rather than a pacer as anyone riding one could get a compulsion to rent an angle grinder, chop it up and put it in a skip.
Perhaps also Class 101 DMU in Regional Railways livery ?
Plenty Sprinters of course in Regional Railways & Provincial liveries - chance to run a Dapol class 155 if you can find one, its contemporary to the period
Have you misread the time period as 19
86 - 19
89, perchance? No chocolate and cream "Skippers" or 155s in any livery in the correct 1996 - 1999 time period being asked about.
Wales & West were responsible for local services in the South West post-privatisation. Class 150s and 158s would have been prevalent, and class 153s on the Devon and Cornish branches. During the time period being considered, all of these classes operated by Wales and West retained their Regional Railways liveries.
The Burngullow to Irvine "silver bullet" china clay workings were a well known daily freight flow, utilising a class 60. Prior to privatisation, this train was operated by Transrail, so Trainload Freight and Transrail grey locos would have been standard, but of course once EWS took over then the variety of liveries multiplied, not least with the introduction of the EWS red & gold corporate image. There was also a Tavistock Junction (Plymouth) to Fawley working of bogie oil tankers, worked by a "heavyweight" 37/7 (in any livery going).
Traditionally, St Blazey depot in Cornwall had a fairly large allocation of class 37/5s for handling China Clay workings, and as far as I remember they all gained Transrail livery immediately prior to privatisation. I'm not sure how focused they still were on the South West region in the 1996 - 99 era, though. Several of these locos were quick to gain the new EWS livery.
Naturally there was also a variety of postal and Travelling Post Office trains, hauled by RES class 47/7s.
The following web pages, offering photos of Colin Marsdens', give a reasonable flavour of what could be found in the South West during that period, even if many of the shots are a year or two later than the chosen time period (Voyagers didn't start to appear until around April 2001, and 67s only started to appear on mail workings sometime during 2000):
http://www.therailwaycentre.com/Sea Wall Guide/SWphoto.html
Having had a look through myself, it has reminded me that there were also a fair number of class 47 hauled mark 2 rakes used by Crosscountry and, to a lesser extent, Great Western. Depending on the exact date, Great Western loco-hauled services would have been hauled by 47s in Intercity, Great Western dark green and Fragonset liveries. The coaching stock went straight from Intercity into FGW "fag packet" livery towards the end of this period. Most of the loco-hauled Crosscountry services originated in the North West, with a smaller number running through from York and, sometimes, Newcastle. The two Porterbrook liveried 47s, 47807 and 47817, were an interesting feature on Crosscountry services during this time, being the first two repainted out of Intercity livery ahead of the corporate Virgin repaints. Virgin were well known for their hire of locos from the likes of Fragonset as well.
