Network Southeast branding strength/history

Gloster · Monday at 12:43

Moderator note: split from

What was train travel like between Surrey and London in 1993?

Hi! This is my first time on this forum. I’m writing a fictional story set in the UK in 1993 and would really appreciate some help understanding what train travel would have been like during that time, particularly for a journey from Surrey (Woking, specifically) to London (ideally Waterloo...

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yorkie said:
Technically Network SouthEast at that time.

But to many people it was still just British Rail, or to more regular travellers possibly British Rail, Southern Region.

There were possibly still a few who just called it Southern or ‘the Southern’. The signage might have been Network South East, but that was just too amorphous an idea.

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yorkie · Monday at 12:50

Gloster said:
But to many people it was still just British Rail, or to more regular travellers possibly British Rail, Southern Region. There were possibly still a few who just called it Southern or ‘the Southern’. The signage might have been Network South East, but that was just too amorphous an idea.

The network south east brand was strong and well established by 1993.

Would be interesting to see what @yorksrob thinks.

Gloster · Monday at 13:07

It might well have been NSE to those who had started travelling in the seven years since the brand appeared and to enthusiasts and other cognoscenti, but to the the majority of people it was just British Rail, particularly if they weren’t resident in the South-East. Many commuters and regular travellers would continue to use the various SR possibilities that they had travelled with when they began their commuter. In particular a visitor, which may be what the original thread’s OP may be interested in, if they are from anywhere outside the NSE area or abroad, will see it is as British Rail. If they are returning to the area after more than seven years away they may still automatically see it as Southern.

(I am trying to look at things from the original thread’s OP’s possible character.)

yorksrob · Monday at 13:10

Certainly growing up in Kent in the late 80's, the NSE branding seemed very dominant. Not only down to the trains and stations, but also the maps were NSE (southern stations didn't have maps of the whole network, which I always sound odd), the solari indicators and loud ticking clocks were also NSE.

BR was also there in the background, but the NSE lozenge was more widely displayed than the double arrows.

There didn't seem to be much awareness of the old Southern Region, except where a unit turned up in heritage Southern green livery.

James H · Monday at 13:12

The NSE branding was something that definitely penetrated the consciousness of people well beyond those who would typically take an active interest in such things.

Magdalia · Monday at 13:31

Gloster said:
There were possibly still a few who just called it Southern or ‘the Southern’. The signage might have been Network South East, but that was just too amorphous an idea.

Network SouthEast wasn't an amorphous idea, it was a very strong brand, established through product promotions and advertising, backed up by the consistent signage. It wasn't just younger people who only knew Network SouthEast, it was also the huge numbers of new travellers of all ages attracted to the railway for the first time.

Gloster · Monday at 14:17

I will just make clear that I am still looking at it from the view of the possible character in #1 in the original post here. Even though a new thread has been formed, that is where it started.

I think that there may be an age question here: a lot of the posters are probably in their forties or fifties and are looking at it from their angle now, but they need to look at from the angle of an average member of the public of any age in 1993. Someone who is fifty now would have been eighteen then and so NSE would have existed since they were eleven, probably all of the time since they started being interested in railways. Even someone ten years older would have had NSE there for nearly half their years of railway interest. And of course you have to, if looking at the situation in 1993, eliminate all that you became conscious of later on.

But someone of fifty then would have only known NSE for about a quarter (or less) of their working career, while someone of sixty would have known it for less than a fifth. And there is that once a commuter has got in the regular rut, as long as the train keeps going many are not necessarily going to take much notice of minor details, like the the NSE brand: see the thread on people accidently travelling on tours for examples.

There is a great failing in historical fiction (films and TV are the worst) of portraying attitudes and knowledge as seen now with hindsight, rather than based on what was then the norm. Your memories, if filtered to remove anachronisms, are perfectly acceptable for your age and peer group, but should not be taken as representative of the populace at large.

Taunton · Monday at 14:37

It was still perceived as British Rail (itself a huge brand penetration from the onetime British Railways). Things like flat share adverts in the Evening Standard (very much of this era) would, for brevity, commonly use "Nr BR" for near a commuter station, generally along with the actual location like Kingston.

Sad Sprinter · Monday at 19:28

My Mum, born in the 60s just remembers in as British Rail, but my aunt, born in the 70s, remembers Network SouthEast. Me, born after privatisation, remembers it very fondly because the branding was still all over the Networkers, and my 1990s era VHS tapes were all pre-privatisation. I was not very aware of British Rail on the other hand.

Djgr · Tuesday at 09:01

Living in Essex in 1986, the arrival of Network South East appeared massive. I still remember travelling on the first Network Day.

However we would usually refer to it as Notwork South East and when a train was cancelled exclaim "You've been Networked"!

Mind you, with the coming of privatisation leading to the likes of the LTS scandal, Connex etc, these were truly glory days.

Bald Rick · Tuesday at 09:11

NSE was a sufficiently strong brand that Paul Merton made jokes about it (and not BR) in his first TV series; that aired in 1991.

Mat17 · Tuesday at 09:37

I grew up in the North and I was aware of Network South East, I always thought of it as a London thing. It obviously wasn't as forceful in my mind as Intercity.

nw1 · Tuesday at 10:11

My school commute encompassed both late blue-and-grey and NSE, the rebranding to NSE coming around halfway through.

The perception was that NSE was a new brand, a new look to British Rail for the London and SE era. I still remember the first unit I saw in NSE livery, which was about this time of year in 1986: VEP 7850 on a Guildford-Ascot service in a shiny new livery. I believe this was a South Eastern unit at the time so maybe it was doing a tour of the Southern NSE era.

At first (e.g. 1986 and early 1987) it did seem to be just a branding and some were a bit cynical but, with time (particularly the 1988-90 period), it did become apparent that NSE wanted to improve services and introduce new and innovative service patterns. A good number of electrifications took place under their watch (East Grinstead, Weymouth, Solent) and in each case a significant service improvement took place. They also increased frequencies and tried out innovative new, or re-introduced routes, for example through working from the Camberley line to Waterloo again and also to Reading, and through Guildford/Woking-Staines services.

Basically Oct 1987 to May 1990 definitely seemed like a period of solid improvement. It's a shame the recession caused some routes to go into decline from 1991.

Network Days were fun, who else remembers 21 June and 13 Sep 1986?

BeijingDave · Tuesday at 10:24

James H said:
The NSE branding was something that definitely penetrated the consciousness of people well beyond those who would typically take an active interest in such things.

I would certainly agree, it was definitely more visible, uniform and widely established than many of the other regional metro-type brands that sprung up, with the possible exception of Merseyrail.

Big Jumby 74 · Tuesday at 11:02

For me the NSE 'branding' etc was in essence just a change of livery, but that's perhaps because it was just part of the day job. Chris Green I had/have the utmost respect for in saying that. Have always found the livery in both its original and later modified guises very attractive, especially when applied to VEPs and CIGs etc (my staple diet).

nw1 said:
Network Days were fun, who else remembers 21 June and 13 Sep 1986?

Can't remember much now, but being Short term plan events they were down to the STP planners to arrange, and the former was a weekend I had a hand in planning for one area. Recall I was involved in another, but don't remember the date now, although if the latter was 12 weeks after the June event (if my maths is correct) that would also have fallen to me in part. We had planners planning one weekend in four back then on my patch, one person for each of timings, stock and crew diagram alterations.

nw1 · Tuesday at 12:23

Big Jumby 74 said:
For me the NSE 'branding' etc was in essence just a change of livery, but that's perhaps because it was just part of the day job. Chris Green I had/have the utmost respect for in saying that. Have always found the livery in both its original and later modified guises very attractive, especially when applied to VEPs and CIGs etc (my staple diet).

Can't remember much now, but being Short term plan events they were down to the STP planners to arrange, and the former was a weekend I had a hand in planning for one area. Recall I was involved in another, but don't remember the date now, although if the latter was 12 weeks after the June event (if my maths is correct) that would also have fallen to me in part. We had planners planning one weekend in four back then on my patch, one person for each of timings, stock and crew diagram alterations.

One thing I did note about the later Network Day on 13 Sep 1986, when I did Waterloo East-Canterbury West-Canterbury East-Victoria, was the stock formations on fast Chatham line services. I noted that, in contrast to typical South Western and Central Division stock allocations, many of the fast services were operated with VEPs.

For years I thought that was standard practice but in retrospect maybe they just allocated VEPs on that day due to providing more seating? I do note for example that the 1982 CWN of the South Eastern division (pre-NSE) had mostly CEPs on those fast services. For example my return from Canterbury was a fast and was formed either 12VEP or 8VEP+4CEP (can't remember which, it was certainly mostly VEPs though).

I also remember catching an Ashford stopper from Waterloo East and then changing into a Canterbury West service at Ashford. This proved to be a wise choice as the Ashford stopper (formed CEP+VEP) wasn't overly busy while the via-Dover and via-Canterbury divider that followed it was heaving, despite being formed 12CEP.

Likewise in June 1986 I remember catching a 10HAP relief that immediately followed the (full to bursting) regular Waterloo-Bournemouth '92' from Woking - with the same calling pattern. I swear this came out of Woking sidings but previous discussions on here suggest that might not have been the case. Maybe I was just muddling things as I do know that Woking sidings did hold a number of HAPs at the weekend at one point.

Aside from this relief, however, I did not notice any changes to the usual stock allocations for a Saturday on that day. The return journey was late afternoon on a regular '92' (thus my only journey on a TC/REP formation, ever) and that wasn't especially full.

yorksrob · Tuesday at 13:28

Bald Rick said:
NSE was a sufficiently strong brand that Paul Merton made jokes about it (and not BR) in his first TV series; that aired in 1991.

I also remember it being referenced by Humphrey Lyttleton on "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue".

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Tuesday at 13:33 ==

nw1 said:
One thing I did note about the later Network Day on 13 Sep 1986, when I did Waterloo East-Canterbury West-Canterbury East-Victoria, was the stock formations on fast Chatham line services. I noted that, in contrast to typical South Western and Central Division stock allocations, many of the fast services were operated with VEPs.

For years I thought that was standard practice but in retrospect maybe they just allocated VEPs on that day due to providing more seating? I do note for example that the 1982 CWN of the South Eastern division (pre-NSE) had mostly CEPs on those fast services. For example my return from Canterbury was a fast and was formed either 12VEP or 8VEP+4CEP (can't remember which, it was certainly mostly VEPs though).

I also remember catching an Ashford stopper from Waterloo East and then changing into a Canterbury West service at Ashford. This proved to be a wise choice as the Ashford stopper (formed CEP+VEP) wasn't overly busy while the via-Dover and via-Canterbury divider that followed it was heaving, despite being formed 12CEP.

Likewise in June 1986 I remember catching a 10HAP relief that immediately followed the (full to bursting) regular Waterloo-Bournemouth '92' from Woking - with the same calling pattern. I swear this came out of Woking sidings but previous discussions on here suggest that might not have been the case. Maybe I was just muddling things as I do know that Woking sidings did hold a number of HAPs at the weekend at one point.

Aside from this relief, however, I did not notice any changes to the usual stock allocations for a Saturday on that day. The return journey was late afternoon on a regular '92' (thus my only journey on a TC/REP formation, ever) and that wasn't especially full.

A HAP unit trip to Bournemouth ! That would have been heaven ! I only found out about the later network days (only started taking the Railway Magazine in about 1989).

Big Jumby 74 · Tuesday at 13:57

nw1 said:
One thing I did note about the later Network Day on 13 Sep 1986, when I did Waterloo East-Canterbury West-Canterbury East-Victoria, was the stock formations on fast Chatham line services. I noted that, in contrast to typical South Western and Central Division stock allocations, many of the fast services were operated with VEPs.

Must be remembered that these events were weekends, so as a rule the normal service pattern would apply, with (likely) many formations as booked. Some will likely have been replaced with maximum capacity stock, but there were limits to this, as (on a Friday evening after the pm peak) there was only so much resource capacity (crews) to reposition stock in time for the Network days additional services, and so many of those additional's will have been formed of stock normally sat spare on weekends.

nw1 said:
Likewise in June 1986 I remember catching a 10HAP relief that immediately followed the (full to bursting) regular Waterloo-Bournemouth '92' from Woking

That will most definitely have been an on the day Control planned move, resourced (as a best guess from memory of those days) from Farnham shed which had a few spare HAPs on weekends. There was only one pre planned use of a long formation of HAPs that weekend, and that was on an 09xx relief from Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour (12 HAP), resourced from Wimbledon depot. It had a planned return working, but the details of the timings of that escape me now.
This was it on the way Down passing Woking Junction;

Sad Sprinter · Tuesday at 14:50

nw1 said:
One thing I did note about the later Network Day on 13 Sep 1986, when I did Waterloo East-Canterbury West-Canterbury East-Victoria, was the stock formations on fast Chatham line services. I noted that, in contrast to typical South Western and Central Division stock allocations, many of the fast services were operated with VEPs.

For years I thought that was standard practice but in retrospect maybe they just allocated VEPs on that day due to providing more seating? I do note for example that the 1982 CWN of the South Eastern division (pre-NSE) had mostly CEPs on those fast services. For example my return from Canterbury was a fast and was formed either 12VEP or 8VEP+4CEP (can't remember which, it was certainly mostly VEPs though).

I also remember catching an Ashford stopper from Waterloo East and then changing into a Canterbury West service at Ashford. This proved to be a wise choice as the Ashford stopper (formed CEP+VEP) wasn't overly busy while the via-Dover and via-Canterbury divider that followed it was heaving, despite being formed 12CEP.

Likewise in June 1986 I remember catching a 10HAP relief that immediately followed the (full to bursting) regular Waterloo-Bournemouth '92' from Woking - with the same calling pattern. I swear this came out of Woking sidings but previous discussions on here suggest that might not have been the case. Maybe I was just muddling things as I do know that Woking sidings did hold a number of HAPs at the weekend at one point.

Aside from this relief, however, I did not notice any changes to the usual stock allocations for a Saturday on that day. The return journey was late afternoon on a regular '92' (thus my only journey on a TC/REP formation, ever) and that wasn't especially full.

My impression post-privatisation was that it was either 4CEPs or VEPs on Connex South Eastern as it was then.

Failed Unit · Tuesday at 15:27

I remember all the Sectors were well known. People board in the 50s and 60s knew the brand.

I was in provincial country. The sprinter brand was well known. Along with the “metro train”. I think NSE and Intercity were stronger.

nw1 · Tuesday at 16:11

yorksrob said:
A HAP unit trip to Bournemouth ! That would have been heaven ! I only found out about the later network days (only started taking the Railway Magazine in about 1989).

Technically it was only to Brockenhurst (as destination was Yarmouth IOW) but I know what you mean!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Tuesday at 16:13 ==

Big Jumby 74 said:
Must be remembered that these events were weekends, so as a rule the normal service pattern would apply, with (likely) many formations as booked. Some will likely have been replaced with maximum capacity stock, but there were limits to this, as (on a Friday evening after the pm peak) there was only so much resource capacity (crews) to reposition stock in time for the Network days additional services, and so many of those additional's will have been formed of stock normally sat spare on weekends.

That will most definitely have been an on the day Control planned move, resourced (as a best guess from memory of those days) from Farnham shed which had a few spare HAPs on weekends. There was only one pre planned use of a long formation of HAPs that weekend, and that was on an 09xx relief from Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour (12 HAP), resourced from Wimbledon depot. It had a planned return working, but the details of the timings of that escape me now.
This was it on the way Down passing Woking Junction;

Interesting - I can give a bit of info about the approximate time.

If I remember right it immediately followed the 0945 Waterloo-Bournemouth from Woking.
What I do remember is changing at Brockenhurst into the summer-only through Waterloo-Lymington, which if I remember right was always 1000.

So it would have been something like 1015 ex-Woking. I'm almost certain it arrived into Woking from the north (whether the sidings or the London area) - I don't remember any reversing.

61653 HTAFC · Tuesday at 16:16

Failed Unit said:
I remember all the Sectors were well known. People board in the 50s and 60s knew the brand.

I was in provincial country. The sprinter brand was well known. Along with the “metro train”. I think NSE and Intercity were stronger.

I don't think I ever heard any non-enthusiast refer to "Provincial" or "Regional Railways" in conversation. "Metro train" was used locally- I distinctly remember a cousin who wasn't into trains gushing about how "the new metrotrains are amazing, it's like being on a plane!" after riding on a 158.

NSE was something I was aware of as a young train nerd, but I'm not sure how familiar the "man on the Clapham (Yorks) Omnibus" would have been with it. Any comedian on TV at the time (Paul Merton aside, as per an earlier post!) would be well advised to use British Rail as a punchline rather than Network South East.

Speaking of Paul Merton, NSE livery did make it into the opening credits animation of Have I Got News For You for a while.

Failed Unit · Tuesday at 16:28

61653 HTAFC said:
I don't think I ever heard any non-enthusiast refer to "Provincial" or "Regional Railways" in conversation. "Metro train" was used locally- I distinctly remember a cousin who wasn't into trains gushing about how "the new metrotrains are amazing, it's like being on a plane!" after riding on a 158.

NSE was something I was aware of as a young train nerd, but I'm not sure how familiar the "man on the Clapham (Yorks) Omnibus" would have been with it. Any comedian on TV at the time (Paul Merton aside, as per an earlier post!) would be well advised to use British Rail as a punchline rather than Network South East.

Speaking of Paul Merton, NSE livery did make it into the opening credits animation of Have I Got News For You for a while.

As a child you certainly saw Network South East advertised more often. Most of the stations had the branding as you were getting close to London. Even at Kings Cross you had 2 boards - Inter-City and NSE (Granted they were next door to each other) However you didn’t need to look at one over the other.

Us slightly north of Peterborough didn’t really have any reference to ”Provincial” on any of the stations of publicity. The PTEs had their branding where relevant. Regional Railways started appearing with the 153s, However most of the 156s / 158s the Lincolnshire / South Yorkshire area never really had any reference to Regional Railways ever. They were repainted into their privatised livery.

I was in London infrequently, I do recall travel news referring to NSE. Again in Lincolnshire it was just “The Trains”. NSE they certainly in my opinion did try to make something of it. The Regional areas actually had more new rolling stock in this period which just had Sprinter / Super Sprinter and Express on the side. NSE did paint up some old units, But had lots of new the 319s, 321s and 442s spring to mind. The 317s seemed to gain painted fairly quickly (unless the later ones were delivered in NSE)

nlogax · Tuesday at 16:35

The strength of NSE's brand was further enhanced by the absolute drabness of what preceded it in the region. The Mk1 branding was particularly bright and a welcome sight compared to blue/grey or just blue from the first half of the 80s.

nw1 · Tuesday at 16:51

I would tend to agree that both NSE and IC had stronger branding than Provincial/RR - but then again I didn't really start using RR services regularly until around 1993.

One Provincial/RR journey I did make in this era was Knutsford to Chester and v.v. in September 1988 - if I remember right it was simply BR blue/grey with no extra branding. At the time it was still a first-gen DMU and still ran via Sale, so it felt very much the same as a few years earlier in 1984 when I also used that line.

I also saw a pair of Pacers (142s) at Topsham in Feb 1987 - but I seem to remember these were painted in a "classic GWR" style livery, not Provincial/RR.

Failed Unit · Tuesday at 17:00

Just looking at new stock introductions, (How could I forget about the networkers) - Not sure if “Jaffa Cake confused things”. NSE was born in 1986 - which planned to be well published. Inter-City was already know so slowly paint things was fine.

When you look at new Regional stock, a lot of it was in local livery. Some of the pacers came in with the blue / white. Must of the EMUs were in the PTE livery (318, 323, 321 etc)

The Mk1 DMUs and 304s stayed in BR blue until nearly the end. NSE repainted class 101s into Reading. Maybe the ones working into Manchester didn’t need a repaint and the Mk1s in the SouthEast did. There seemed more effort to get NSE applied. Inter-City was applied as trains were refurbished, not sure if the later mk3 were delivered in IC as new. Scotrail did paint some of the loco hauled stock. Regional loco haul stock could be in any livery,

nw1 · Tuesday at 18:28

Failed Unit said:
Just looking at new stock introductions, (How could I forget about the networkers) - Not sure if “Jaffa Cake confused things”. NSE was born in 1986 - which planned to be well published. Inter-City was already know so slowly paint things was fine.

When you look at new Regional stock, a lot of it was in local livery. Some of the pacers came in with the blue / white. Must of the EMUs were in the PTE livery (318, 323, 321 etc)

The Mk1 DMUs and 304s stayed in BR blue until nearly the end. NSE repainted class 101s into Reading. Maybe the ones working into Manchester didn’t need a repaint and the Mk1s in the SouthEast did. There seemed more effort to get NSE applied. Inter-City was applied as trains were refurbished, not sure if the later mk3 were delivered in IC as new. Scotrail did paint some of the loco hauled stock. Regional loco haul stock could be in any livery,

I do remember some 101s in RR livery in the mid- and late-90s in the Manchester area.

sprinterguy · Wednesday at 08:48

nw1 said:
I do remember some 101s in RR livery in the mid- and late-90s in the Manchester area.

Yeah, the 101s and 117s that were refurbished for Regional Railways received the sector livery (as well as a handful of Laira 122s); the former consolidated at Longsight depot by 1994, and the latter at Tyseley.

In terms of modernisation plan EMUs, all the facelifted RR sector 305/5s, in the Manchester area and on the electrified North Berwick branch, received the standard sector livery, as did a small number of the Longsight 304s though it's true to say that many of those retained BR blue and grey livery until the end. Latterly a small number of 'Clacton' 309s received the later 'green stripe' North West sub-sector livery when cascaded to the North West, and the Manchester area 305/5s gained the GMPTE dark grey and white livery.

Regional Railways, though, did seem to take a long time to really get going in terms of brand rollout after its inception in 1991, understandably given the revenue constraints of the sector, and Provinicial before it seemed a fairly weak brand, as the livery for most 'inherited' stock (barring the Transpennine mark 2s and one 47) remained BR blue and grey and the sector name didn't feature as part of the external livery on new Pacer and Sprinter stock.

NorthKent1989 · Wednesday at 09:00

yorkie said:
The network south east brand was strong and well established by 1993.

Would be interesting to see what @yorksrob thinks.

The brand was still strong in the noughties, being at school at the time my head teacher referred to my school as being reachable by “the Network South East train” when Connex was the operator of my line at the time.

Also recall watching an episode of Mock The Week around 2007/2008 and one of the comedians (Sean Lock I think) said “getting the Network South East to Croydon”

Sad Sprinter · Wednesday at 09:50

NorthKent1989 said:
The brand was still strong in the noughties, being at school at the time my head teacher referred to my school as being reachable by “the Network South East train” when Connex was the operator of my line at the time.

Also recall watching an episode of Mock The Week around 2007/2008 and one of the comedians (Sean Lock I think) said “getting the Network South East to Croydon”

It really makes you wonder what on earth the point of getting rid of it after only 8 years was.

Network Southeast branding strength/history

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