This is where I think taking a cue from other countries and introducing named service types and routes would be helpful. The UK is a bit of an outlier in not identifying trains beyond departure time and destination.
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Livery under Great British Railways
- Thread starter OneTrackMinded
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I certainly have and I did address that in my post before (though it's expected that most will not have seen that). Can vinyls cover a large enough portion of a train to be considered a new livery? Will the cheaper cost actually outweigh the issues they bring?
12LDA28C
Established Member
That sounds like a deficiency where the surface has not been correctly prepared before vinyl application. Once correctly applied, water should not be able to ingress between the vinyl and the bodywork.
Yes of course. An entire locomotive or carriage can be vinyled. An example of this would be Chiltern's Hybrid Class 168 unit which has now had the vinyl removed to reveal the previous standard 'mainline' livery.
43096
On Moderation
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Whilst bodywork preparation is important, it's not the only cause. Vinyls get damaged and worn (ballast thrown up, general wear and tear) and that lets the water in behind too. The joins where the vinyls are applied also provide an opportuinioty for water ingress, regardless of how well they are applied.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I think realistically what we'll see isn't full revinylling but rather the TOC logos removed and GBR branding added to existing liveries, at least until repaints are due. Though perhaps one unit per TOC will be done fully in vinyl as part of a launch.
Possibly even the TOC logos retained and a subtle "by Great British Railways" and BR symbol added underneath or to the side as appropriate.
Possibly even the TOC logos retained and a subtle "by Great British Railways" and BR symbol added underneath or to the side as appropriate.
ollyexe2808
Member
Agreed - Intercity services having an IC number etc could help with that. A subject for another thread, but I wonder whether such a move could be workable across the UK?
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
Avanti kind of already do this, the displays on Class 390 doors say (for example) "VT1S58"
omnicity4659
Member
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I don’t even think that “Great British Railways” will be that much of a publicly facing brand, with the Rail Symbol instead being the prominent brand instead. Rail Symbol is such a recognisable symbol that people will know what it is, regardless of whatever the controlling organisation is calling itself this decade.
Visual adverts are already using Rail Symbol by itself, and radio adverts use neutral terms like “the train” and “Britain’s rail network”, also suggesting that having a named brand isn’t too important.
Visual adverts are already using Rail Symbol by itself, and radio adverts use neutral terms like “the train” and “Britain’s rail network”, also suggesting that having a named brand isn’t too important.
TT-ONR-NRN
Veteran Member
Ridiculous. How on earth does that give a convincing impression of one single joined up railway?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Because you have to phase things in for them to be economically viable. You don't have to repaint the whole fleet on day one.
Out of interest, how long did Network SouthEast take to rebrand everything? I'm assuming it obviously wasn't overnight, but was it months or years?
12LDA28C
Established Member
Years. There were still units in BR blue livery well into at least 1990, four years after NSE was launched.
Do the public really care about that visual impression? They just want co-ordination and maybe a single source of ticketing and information.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
A good visual impression helps to sell the product, of course, but it'll take time. Crikey, haven't GWR only just, after a number of years since rebranding, painted the last Class 150 out of purple and pink?
Though I've been surprised by how quickly Manchester has painted the buses yellow, I guess (a) painting a bus is easier than a train, (b) plain yellow is very easy to do, and (c) it's a load of different bus companies each with their own paintshop/painting contract? Rail is nowhere near as simple, just like with most things.
... and to not get screwed over in disruption when operator X (probably CrossCountry) breaks the NRCoT and decides that their ticket isn't valid because it's "not for this train operator"
Russel
Established Member
Given the extortionate fares, overcrowding and general unreliability haven't put people off rail travel, I doubt the livery/branding is much of a concern!
Sun Chariot
Established Member
Or perhaps it's simply because they cannot find viable work in a closer location, so they have to endure the commute?
Particularly in these past 2 to 3 years.
I found my career "domain" has all but evaporated within the bottom quarter of the UK; and I fully expect my next role will necessitate commuting up to 100 miles each way per day by rail or by road.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Time, then, to consider relocation or career change. Long term that isn't sustainable. It'll kill your mental health.
Sun Chariot
Established Member
Easier said than done at our age and our current situation, sadly.
A good visual impression doesn’t need a National brand, particularly when a local one might be more popular.
Manchester’s yellow buses will have an impact as ‘our’ buses, controlled locally. A nationalised industry if anything has the opposite effect.
Wivenswold
Established Member
On the AC side of NSE 305 412 & 305 420 were the last to run in Blue/Grey on NSE metals, they bowed-out on 23 Jan 1993.
I'm pretty sure Southern had some EPBs in that livery right up until their withdrawal in 1995. I've not started researching DC EMU and DMU liveries in the 90s yet.
305 420 then moved to Manchester where it joined the many Class 304s that remained in Blue/Grey.
As a side note. 304 032 was the last Blue/Grey AC EMU up until its withdrawal in May 1996.
Sun Chariot
Established Member
Certainly there were examples in the 1993-4 period.
I photographed BR-design 4EPBs at London Bridge in 1994 and blue/grey ones were in use.
Latter 1993, I photographed a selection of withdrawn BR(E) cls 307s and Bulleid-design 4EPBs, all in blue grey, dumped at Banbury's north sidings.
Which for a national railway makes perfect sense. Localised train brands should only be kept for localised services such as Merseyrail or London Overground. I also don't see why a local brand might be more popular or why the feeling of having a local brand is important. Passengers just want trains that will run on time without confusion, I don't think they care about having an "our trains" feeling.
If you agree with local brands for Merseyrail and LO why not for other TOCs?
What passengers want is a slightly different issue - brand is about attracting people to the service and making it feel like a nice choice (something passengers wouldn’t necessarily realise they are thinking), and having a localness is part of that. The livery equivalent of RA2 and it will just feel like a distress purchase, provided by a faceless government bureaucracy.
generalnerd
Member
Exactly! It’s why sectorisation worked so well. The railway felt (in some ways) more caring and personal, even if some sectors spanned the country.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Do you think SBB-CFF-FFS is...
(a) A distress purchase, provided by a faceless government bureaucracy;
(b) Probably the best railway in Europe if not in the world (give or take Japan)?
If you think (a) I suspect you're going to be in a tiny minority.
It will feel like a distress purchase if it's rubbish. Frankly both Northern and Avanti West Coast presently feel like a distress purchase due to their woeful performance, and LNER so because of its high fares.
I did like the local livery variants for Regional Railways, but I don't think we really need to go much further than that.
InterCity in particular would be better as one thing.
This isn’t Switzerland - nationalised industries have a different image here, and of course Switzerland is a third the size and a sixth of the population of England.
Under your plan all of Intercity as a brand would be tainted by West Coast.
Why?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
There's your motivation to fix it. It's not OK having half the operation an absolute shambles. It was fine in 2019; it can work properly. It just needs a serious management clearout and replacement with ones that know what 'industrial relations' means.
Also, was ICEC "tainted" by the then also pretty rubbish ICWC under BR? I don't think it was.
Because it's a network, and if run as such it allows journeys to be made much more effectively that aren't simple direct ones, and while direct services to London are the biggest market these are still important.
Because Merseyrail and London Overground are largely self-contained networks with little connection to the national network, and also because they are already under control by the local authorities, so from a practical standpoint the juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze to bring them into DfT control compared to GBR which spans different regions and networks.
I do personally think you are overestimating how much passengers will care about localised branding, but if that's your genuine preference then that's okay. I just don't think passengers will care about having a local brand for their local railway services compared to just wanting a reliable efficient operator with no ambiguity on who runs what.
Wivenswold
Established Member
A change in branding can work as a way of disassociating a product from a brand that has a level of toxicity. Marketing firms make a lot of money from refreshing or reinvigorating a product's market appeal.
The vision of the sectorisation branding was, in part, to banish the countrywide joke that British Rail had become in the media.
Refurbished, rebranded trains do fool some passengers into thinking the train is new, I once had a big row with a FB friend over whether the Class 321 Renatus trains were brand new and a similar disagreement when First Great Eastern refurbished the same units back in the late nineties.
Greater Anglia immediately improved perception of rail services after the dark days of "ONE/National Express East Anglia", introducing an app, ensuring trains were cleaner and lots of bright red and white which looked far fresher than dour white and navy blue (possibly why I support Arsenal and not Spurs).
The fleet renewal gave GA the opportunity to apply a new modern livery styling inside and out thus putting clear light between the passenger experience old trains and new. Perhaps the best example of a railway rebrand was Intercity, from the notorious BR sandwich to a quality operator of fast services in less than a decade and still the best livery BR trains have worn in my lifetime. It survived a remarkably long time too with some Mk2s in East Anglia still wearing it in 2005.
NSE initially didn't want its new colours on any unrefurbished trains or non-corridor units (though some did sneak through) opting just for the symbol and brand name with Blue/Grey, which explains why it took 10 years to banish BR Blue and Blue/Grey trains from its network.
The vision of the sectorisation branding was, in part, to banish the countrywide joke that British Rail had become in the media.
Refurbished, rebranded trains do fool some passengers into thinking the train is new, I once had a big row with a FB friend over whether the Class 321 Renatus trains were brand new and a similar disagreement when First Great Eastern refurbished the same units back in the late nineties.
Greater Anglia immediately improved perception of rail services after the dark days of "ONE/National Express East Anglia", introducing an app, ensuring trains were cleaner and lots of bright red and white which looked far fresher than dour white and navy blue (possibly why I support Arsenal and not Spurs).
The fleet renewal gave GA the opportunity to apply a new modern livery styling inside and out thus putting clear light between the passenger experience old trains and new. Perhaps the best example of a railway rebrand was Intercity, from the notorious BR sandwich to a quality operator of fast services in less than a decade and still the best livery BR trains have worn in my lifetime. It survived a remarkably long time too with some Mk2s in East Anglia still wearing it in 2005.
NSE initially didn't want its new colours on any unrefurbished trains or non-corridor units (though some did sneak through) opting just for the symbol and brand name with Blue/Grey, which explains why it took 10 years to banish BR Blue and Blue/Grey trains from its network.
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