Depot logos

[Eng274]

Apologies if this has been covered before, or this is in the wrong place.

I'm curious to know if there is/are website(s) that have a comprehensive list of local depot "logos" (like the railfreight sector logos) which usually featured animals. I'm aware they go back many many years and so the likelihood of getting digital images is difficult, as many fruitless google searches are proving.

How did they come about, and who/what decided what each location's logo was?

I'm particularly interested in acquiring an image of the Shields ETD depot logo (being where I work) mainly to update my avatar. I have seen a fleeting glance of the logo somewhere, it is a small rat or mouse carrying a flag AFAIK..

Any help is appreciated!

 

[sprinterguy]

The depot plaques were devised by the Roundel Group while they were creating the trainload freight sub-sector liveries in the eighties, as an attempt to instil a sense of pride into depots to look after "their" locomotives by giving them a quick and easy means of identification.

The Class 58 Group website has some useful information on them, and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page they have examples of over twenty of the plaques. Apparently there were once over forty different designs:
http://www.c58lg.co.uk/index.php/class-58-history/trainload-coal-days/

Some were designed by the Roundel group with respect to attributes of the local area around the depot, such as a dominant industry or heritage, others were suggested by staff at the depots themselves.

A number of the designs that made it onto plaques had also been around in a semi-official form for a number of years, usually as painted decals: The Thornaby Kingfisher was one that had adorned the sides of Railfreight red stripe liveried locomotives, Eastfield had been applying West Highland terrier graphics to locos since the early eighties and Inverness had the "Highland Rail" stag logo that it applied to locos in large logo blue.

As for the Glasgow Shields logo, that will have come about because of the class 303 "Blue Trains". The well known artist Terence Cuneo was commissioned by British Railways to produce a painting of the Blue Trains as publicity material for their launch. Cuneos' trademark was a small mouse, usually anthropomorphic in some way such as carrying a flag, which would appear in every one of his paintings from the late fifties I think. At a much later date, in the early nineties I believe, a Cuneo mouse was actually painted onto the side of one of the 303s, I think by Cuneo himself. There was a picture of it, and its' artist, in a copy of The Railway Magazine at the time. It is this mouse that was the basis for the Shields depot logo, though I don't think that it was ever an official one. How dare you mistake the time served Cuneo mouse for a rat!

 

[Eagle]

Some were designed by the Roundel group with respect to attributes of the local area around the depot, such as a dominant industry or heritage, others were suggested by staff at the depots themselves.

I like the Stratford one!

 

[Oswyntail]

I like the Stratford one!

Which one? IIRC, the original one was a bird in flight, and looked terrible. It was soon changed for the "Cockernee Sparra'" which was well designed (but, like all East End mythologising, gave me the heaves)

 

[sprinterguy]

I like the Stratford one!

I don't know whether you know the story behind it's inception? That one had to go back to the drawing board before it appeared in the adopted style we know today. Stratford had been applying stick-on cartoon Cockney sparrows to it's class 47 locos since the early eighties, like this one here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/justindperkins/2754192281/
But when the first, cartoon-style Cockney sparrow depot plaque was drawn up the folks at Stratford were non too impressed with the design and rejected it, so Roundel had to come up with a replacement design which became the accepted "official" depot plaque.

I've found a more complete list of depot plaques here, including the rejected Cockney Sparrow design:
http://www.depotplaques.com/types.htm

EDIT: Ah, Oswyntail beat me too it!