Great Western Coffee Shop

We are told that there is to be a standard GBR font - will there be a standard colour (livery) too?   If so, what would you like to see.  Purely for fun; there's too much serious stuff around at the moment - poll over the weekend.

Multiple votes allowed - so members can choose a number of colours they would be happy with.

Please don't spend all your time on this thread - have a look at the very serious stuff too!

Second Class Standard Accomodation
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/ff/86/57ff86e71fbc9ecf51450e9bab7a63bc.jpg)

Is Williams advocating a new livery for all GB trains?  I haven't found any reference to it?  Actually so long as they do not waste money repainting trains every time a new operator takes over I am quite happy with different liveries. 

I think it would be popular to have something in the liveries to reflect either the different historic regional identities or of any new ones that may result from the reorganisation.

Inter-City Swallow and IC Executive for long distance services please.

I've voted for Dark Green – I like the current GWR livery, except for one thing: it would be really good to have the yellow stripe above the windows on First Class carriages back – it's hard to eyeball which way round the train is.

Beware management spending lots of money tarting up existing/old trains so they can have their piccies taken in front of them.

Personally I don't care what colour they are, providing they get me where I want, when I want and I am not out of pocket (much?) more than I am now.

Why not? It worked for Network SouthEast, which is the glorious sub-£1 billion railway era that the politicians have convinced themselves they are going back to.

Personally, I will be gobsmacked if the new livery isn't Union Jacks all round, or a suite of livery variants thereof.

Here's what it says in the White Paper (p33) -

"There will be a national brand and identity
to emphasise that the railways are one
connected network.

The rail network should feel like a network, a coherent, consistent,
clearly-branded operation that gives passengers confidence
in using it. Most successful consumer businesses, including
retailers and airlines, aim to create similar levels of consistency
and brand identity.

Great British Railways will use updated versions of the classic
‘double arrow’ logo as well as the Rail Alphabet typeface, used
in this document. Even after 25 years of privatisation, the logo
remains the most widely-used and best-recognised symbol of the
railways. It is the standard marker on road signs. It appears on
most tickets, online, and at the vast majority of stations. It will stay
in those places and increasingly appear on trains, uniforms and
publicity material too as and when these are upgraded or replaced
as a single, unifying brand for the railways. Keeping it also avoids
spending money on yet another new railway logo.

People are understandably sceptical about the frequent
rebranding of trains and stations carried out under the
privatised system, so the branding will be introduced alongside
other improvements. Variants to the national brand will be
developed to refect the English regions, Scotland and Wales,
while emphasising that the railway is one network serving the
whole of Great Britain."

That's very interesting indeed. An "arms-length" Scottish government company will take over the running of services there in March 2022, while the Transport for Wales rail service has been run by a Welsh Government controlled public company since February 2021.

Both already have their own corporate liveries, logos and branding - Will they be required to now use variants to the Great British Railways national brand, and can they be legally forced to if they and the devolved administrations refuse?

I don't think we'll get a choice. 
It'll be whatever colour(s) the local teenagers happen to have in their spray-cans.

In the spirit of-


Lets bring back-

Brown for the west
Malachite green for the south
Red for the Midlands
Dark Blue for East Anglia
Orange for the north east
Light blue for Scotland

Anything left for Wales?

Choice of livery is a long way down my list of concerns.

For all its faults, the privatised railway DID vastly increase passenger numbers compared to the managed decline under BR.

I would like see more train building in the UK rather than importing everything.
New trains with standardised couplings for ease of assisting failures.
All new electric trains being fitted with a either small diesel engine, or a battery for limited use when the wires come down.
A yellow stripe to denote first class.
A red stripe to indicate the buffet or restaurant.
New trains being of a few standardised mechanical designs, with only internal fit out differing according to use.

All the above are much more important than choice of livery IMHO.

I vote for any colour that doesn't show the dirt if the carriage washers are broken.

Maybe a uniformity of seat comfort, levelling up by refitting GWR IET slab board seats to a comfort standard enjoyed elsewhere in the country.

Sorry I just saw a flying pig.

Look at section 41 of the report. You will be pleased.

IIRC seating comfort and the need to replace "ironing board" seats has been specifically mentioned with particular reference to "long distance services"
So yes there is hope.

Edited to add, please see above.

I would be sorry to loose the GWR green, but I do not want that to become the uniform colour across the whole country.  Diversity in liveries is good. 

I grew up _{[Citation needed]} in the era of "If it moves, paint it blue." - the only exceptions being the red stripe on the waistband of the Railway Technical Centre test vehicles.  No objection to that coming back as a principle.
The flying banana has to stay yellow, obv.

On a personal note.  One of the joys of annual train travel in northern Europe as a child in the 60s and 70s was the sight of rolling stock in unfamiliar, exotic liveries....pink and cream stands out in my memories among various others.

With the fact that Great British Railway (GBR) will be using private companies to run the services I suspect they will keep some of the existing branding such as Great Western Railway (GWR) and LNER. 
The branding relating to the Train Operator will be important to remain with the Train Operator as they will be paid on performance and 'customer' experience.  I suspect the publicity will be more akin to the major stations such as Great British Railway (GBR) service operated by Great Western Railway (GWR).

I will be interesting to see how it unfolds ........................ question is do I retire to a safe haven before or carry out working and ride out the storm

Edit: VickiS - Clarifying Acronyms

First thought would be something like current GWR or the old GNER - so a dark base colour with some stripes to give it detail, but fairly understated compared to some.

Perhaps have a bit of room for the private operators' own touches e.g. they can have a logo or lettering.

I'm inclined to go with some of the ways BR did things, mainly because I was a child of the sectors era. This is partly nostalgia of course, and one shouldn't be closed to different ways of doing it, but let's hark back to the way things were...

• Yellow stripe so first class can be identified easily.
• Variations based on service category - bringing back (with the old sector names or more modern brands) InterCity (less clumsy  than saying long-distance high-speed all the time), NSE/equivalent, Regional Railways. BR ended up with completely different liveries for each sector, but maybe variations on a common livery would be better.
• Maybe some specific branding for metro services, like with the PTE branding under BR. Now it might be things like Overground, South Wales Metro etc.

From top of head, a few specific reasons why sector branding might be good...

• Ticketing restrictions can be a bit clearer. E.g. where peak restrictions (should they stay with us as we know them) are TOC-specific, saying 'not valid on IC services between xx.xx & xx.xx' is relatively simple. It can be generally known that all IC trains out of London have specific super-off-peak times, etc.
• People know to expect a certain level of service on IC trains. (e.g. Aim for better interior, catering on all journeys, first class with complimentary port on all trains,  reservations on all trains etc,) - these things apply some of the time on some other services, but can be consistent across IC trains, whereas now people just think one TOC happens to have nicer trains than others. (Or not so nice if they don't like the IET seats!)

I say all this having not read much about the intended concept apart from basic news reports, so I could be in tune with or significantly diverging from actual plans!

The latest TOC liveries have gone to a generic base coat - brunswick Green GWR, white & grey SWR, white & red LNER, Scotrail blue etc.  I'm more inclined to think that those ex-franchise colours will remain with the GBR double arrows supplementing any TOC logo branding. 

And with regard to stripes, GWR have reintroduced them on their latest Castle Class livery - silver for bikes & blue for accessible facilities.

I hope though that they are more conspicuous than the "silver" (grey?) ones on green turbos, which are barely visible. A standard broad yellow would be better.

For IETs, of any operator, I suggest this product, but in bulk of course, the aerosol cans are only for touch ups not for painting a whole train.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184026435525?epid=15010031235&hash=item2ad8d48fc5:g:BfoAAOSwrxBffkk3 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184026435525?epid=15010031235&hash=item2ad8d48fc5:g:BfoAAOSwrxBffkk3)

This is why I ticked the 'something else' option - I think there should be regional variation, but with a common theme. I also ticked the option which suggested differences between long-distance and local services. The 'common theme' I spoke of should be how the long-distance, and regional express services are differentiated, ie.:

• Regional Express rolling stock (eg. 158 and 444) in ALL regions to use a light colour for the main bodyside with a band around the windows in a dark colour (doors to be the same colour as the window band)
• Intercity rolling stock in ALL regions to carry the same base livery as regional express stock with the addition of the italic INTERCITY logo on the lower bodyside and possibly other embelishments (such as Swallow logos or the castles on the ScotRail Inter7City stock

Regional and suburban stock would be differentiated too; one of these would wear a single colour livery (like the current GWR green) and the other would be the inverse of the express livery (in other words, express looks like Swallow and regional (or suburban) would be like BR blue&grey).

I would also ban LNER from using red as a main colour when their stock is due a repaint and move that colour back to it's rightful home on the WCML.

I wouldn't mind too much if there were no regional variations though as that would make it easy to share stock between regions and allow more through services between regions.

I agree that a standard broad yellow stripe for first class should be reintroduced. However, I would hope that the castle sets don't have such stripes because, unless I'm mistaken, there is no first class on the castle sets.

Agree yellow stripe for first class, as used in the past.
Red stripe for catering, as used in the past.
Green stripe for cycle stowage, a logical choice as cycling IS green.
Blue stripe for disabled facilities, a logical choice as already used for disabled parking, and clearly different from the others.

An interesting commentary on choice of colour - Lisa brought this up in a totally different conversation this morning but I thought it could be relevant here.

http://divvyonline.com/tag/color/


If you paint your trains a colour that encourages you to salivate, would that help the business case for on-train catering?

I thought that part of the idea behind the new GBR was to abolish "brand loyalty" or at least strongly discourage same.

Passengers should be thinking of "a train" and not any particular brand thereof.
I do not feel that the introduction of GBR is as revolutionary as some claim, but I welcome it partly for what I hope will be significant cost savings from abolishing "brands, liveries, and design and promotion thereof"

"brand awareness manager" should be one of the first jobs to be abolished, closely followed "product placement manager"

You need to be careful which roles you abolish. From Collateral Damage (https://collateraldamage.wordpress.com/2006/05/02/douglas-adams-right-again-lack-of-phone-sanitizers-will-doom-planet/) - an old blog

You have roles which you might query and wonder if you really need but, my goodness me, we have seen a platoon of people in these previously-ridiculed roles grow to a complete division, and with evidence that we should be very thankful to them.

I am capable of sanitising my own telephone, either at home or in the workplace.

I welcome a simpler railway, with more emphasis on the actual trains, and with less effort wasted on brands, liveries, and publicity.
The best advert is the customer who says "I got the train from ABC to XYZ last week and was impressed with the speed, comfort and facilities"

All too often in recent years we hear the opposite of a potential customer vowing "never again" after being hugely delayed, or paying hundreds of pounds to stand for hours.

No amount of advertising and brand awareness compensates for trains that are regularly too short, unreliable, uncomfortable or considered unsatisfactory in other ways.

Fortunately we are all descended from people whose job was sanitising telephones (and hairdressers) so I think we'll be OK in the end.  ;D

See / hear / read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to understand this sentence.

Normality will be restored just as soon as we know what normal is !!...

Well - beyond the desire for a differentiation between short, medium and long distance train liveries, that's a pretty inconclusive poll. All the more remarkable because "studies have shown that a products's color influenced 60 to 80% of a customer's purchasing decision" according to an article I quoted earlier.  And indeed "color can make or break a product".

I'm not sure I believe that the colour is quite to much of an influencer when travelling by train though.  On the now-rare occasions that a blue one turns up, I don't see people saying "I'll wait for the next one - it may be green ..."

But, actually, I  personally like a bit of variety.   It used to feel like an old friend had arrived when Casper turned up.   Who knows - someone might suggest painting dinosaurs on trains to make them interesting and attractive to leisure travellers next.

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In all seriousness, I suspect that looking clean even when they're not, being a safe colour to see, and not fading will also be used to inform any changes we see, and a logo switch to a modernised double arrow may be all we see soon, with a very gradual changed within the fleet.

No objection to painting dinosaurs on trains, provided that this costs "the railway" nothing whatsoever and that whoever fancies  the dinosaur livery pays for it.

I would even allow adverts on the outside of the train, again provided that the advertiser pays for the privilege. Adverts on buses are generally accepted after all.
I would even allow p0litical adverts during election campaigns, no different in principle to paid for posters on advertising hoardings, and a useful source of revenue.

I would prohibit adverts for products or services that in direct competition to railway services, or that are damaging to the environment.
Adverts for Butlins ? certainly.
Adverts for Disneyworld, USA ? no way.
Adverts for Disneyworld in France ? maybe if it includes promoting train travel thereto.
Adverts for local buses that connect with trains ? certainly.
Adverts for long distance buses that COMPETE with trains ? no way.

I think this speculation of a new standard livery is off the mark. I think we are more likely to see individual TOCs retaining their own identities, with the addition of the new GBR logo (whatever that might look like), tucked away somewhere discretely.

Much like how the GWR livery has ‘a FirstGroup company’ and CrossCountry has ‘by Arriva’ in fairly small lettering, I think we’ll simply see ‘part of Great British Railways’ added to the corner of existing liveries.

If all the trains and uniforms were branded the same how would anyone know who to complain to?!  :D

Absolutely GBR will not be the train operator, they will be awarding contracts to run services and there is a lot to be said for some or the brands such as GWR, LNER etc 

.....but there won't be anything to complain about  ;)