Potential nationalisation - What would happen to the liveries?

[Peter C]

Hello all,
If the Labour party did get in in the next general election, and they did nationalise the railways, what would happen to the liveries on the current rolling stock? My first thought was that just removing any branding, like new TOCs do when they take over from an old operator. However, surely this would mean that the rolling stock would still look like a privatised system? Also, would we go back to NSE, Intercity Swallow, etc.? Or would the nationalised network go for a new colour scheme? Looking at the way that current liveries are going, a new one will be black and white, with a white front, and no character like the liveries we have now.

Any of your thoughts are appreciated.

I know that there are bigger issues with nationalisation, but I was just wondering about what would happen to the liveries and I thought that you may have some more ideas.
If this is in the wrong sub-forum, or already has a thread, please let me know.

-Peter

 

[The Ham]

Hello all,
If the Labour party did get in in the next general election, and they did nationalise the railways, what would happen to the liveries on the current rolling stock? My first thought was that just removing any branding, like new TOCs do when they take over from an old operator. However, surely this would mean that the rolling stock would still look like a privatised system? Also, would we go back to NSE, Intercity Swallow, etc.? Or would the nationalised network go for a new colour scheme? Looking at the way that current liveries are going, a new one will be black and white, with a white front, and no character like the liveries we have now.

Any of your thoughts are appreciated.

I know that there are bigger issues with nationalisation, but I was just wondering about what would happen to the liveries and I thought that you may have some more ideas.
If this is in the wrong sub-forum, or already has a thread, please let me know.

-Peter

Personally I'd just keep the branding (less any trade names, such as Virgin) and run each TOC as a separate sector. There could be a case for the boundaries to change and/or for some to merge and/or for their to be oversight/policy based on the old BR sectors.

However personally I think that given the amount of growth we've seen that the old BR sectors are probably a bit too big to be run as they once were.

 

[Peter C]

Personally I'd just keep the branding (less any trade names, such as Virgin) and run each TOC as a separate sector. There could be a case for the boundaries to change and/or for some to merge and/or for their to be oversight/policy based on the old BR sectors.

However personally I think that given the amount of growth we've seen that the old BR sectors are probably a bit too big to be run as they once were.

Very interesting. I'd love to see the sectors return, but potentially with some new liveries; however, on second thoughts, NSE and ICS (Intercity Swallow) would just not be the same without their iconic colours and logos. Downham Market station is already set for a NSE return!

-Peter

 

[xotGD]

There will be a new BR corporate livery. A couple of trains will be repainted for publicity purposes for launch day. Everything else will just be debranded and only get a repaint when it goes through works.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Wouldn’t you have British Rail East Coast, British Rail South East etc?

Personally I think sectorisation might be the treat model but as much as I love Network SouthEast it does sound incredibly 80s.

 

[Peter C]

There will be a new BR corporate livery. A couple of trains will be repainted for publicity purposes for launch day. Everything else will just be debranded and only get a repaint when it goes through works.

Wouldn’t you have British Rail East Coast, British Rail South East etc?

Personally I think sectorisation might be the treat model but as much as I love Network SouthEast it does sound incredibly 80s.

Two interesting ideas.
It seems to be a sensible idea, having units/engines go through the repaint as they go through the works. I wonder what a new livery would look like though?
I like the idea of having the hark back to NSE in "British Rail South East". Maybe "SouthEast" without the space would be better in terms of a throwback but seen as only enthusiasts seem to be interested in the "good old days" of NSE, this may not be chosen....
Sectorisation works; it's all run by BR but it's also in separate divisions to make control easier. NSE was one of, if not the biggest sector of BR at the time it was made. The liveries on the trains and the colour scheme of every aspect of the stations all fits together. On the subject of stations, I wonder if BR would repaint some stations into the old "privatised" colour schemes? E.g. GWR signs and GWR green in the west, ScotRail in Scotland, and LNER/VTEC* on the East Coast?

-Peter

*I think that if BR were to repaint stations into old colour schemes, like people at Downham Market and London Marylebone have done, LNER would probably be chosen, purely because VTEC isn't the best way to describe the East Coast railway!

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Would it be possible to reopen some kind of engineering centre for rolling stock? Would be great to be able to design HS2 trains instead of buying them off the shelf.

 

[Peter C]

Would it be possible to reopen some kind of engineering centre for rolling stock? Would be great to be able to design HS2 trains instead of buying them off the shelf.

That could work. The old Dalby Test Track is still there, and it has been updated for modern use.

-Peter

 

[pdeaves]

If renationalisation happens, I think there will more likely be an entirely new look/livery/image, not anything based on any one bit of history.

 

[Peter C]

If renationalisation happens, I think there will more likely be an entirely new look/livery/image, not anything based on any one bit of history.

Yes; but will it be Blue and Grey, Intercity Swallow, or something more modern?

-Peter

 

[pdeaves]

Yes; but will it be Blue and Grey, Intercity Swallow, or something more modern?

My guess would be, at least initially (excluding transition liveries) something really boringly neutral (actually, thinking further, possibly like Thameslink or Anglia or TfW; i.e. predominantly white with coloured doors).

 

[LLivery]

With the push for the thought of regional control, I can't see it being a revisit of NSE, Regional (SR), and InterCity with little regional identity. So I'd have something like Southern Railway, Great Eastern Railway, Great Western Railway, Midland Railway, Northern Railway, ScotRail, Wales or Welsh something and InterCity (ECML, WCML, XC, GWML, MML). There'd also be TfL Crossrail, TfL LO, MerseyRail and WestMidlands. Even with a Labour gov, I think they'd struggle to get South London's suburbans fully run by TfL so I think it'd be a consortium between SR and TfL working together.

With the fear of a "Labour bringing us back to the 80s" image, the toothpaste livery won't back, but I think they would want something simple and timeless for each region. Just plain liveries similar to the blue SE livery would do. A green version of that would look lovely for SR. As the double arrow is synonymous with the railways, that isn't going anywhere.

 

[43096]

Yes; but will it be Blue and Grey, Intercity Swallow, or something more modern?

-Peter

You can’t go back to those liveries as they were due to the PRM requirements for contrasting colour doors.

 

[The Ham]

You can’t go back to those liveries as they were due to the PRM requirements for contrasting colour doors.

If also suggest that a significant number of people are now used to get the train which is red to get to xxxx or the green train to get to yyyy.

This is especially true of the old NSE area, so I doubt that we'd see a universal colour for each of the old sectors even if the colour schemes were suitable for modern standards.

It's also worth noting that if the plan is to let each franchise expire there's going to be a gap between the first and last, even within the old sectors, when there's still going to be "missing" TOC's.

 

[coppercapped]

The colour the trains are painted is irrelevant - following nationalisation they won't be washed anymore as a result of cost saving measures. There will be a standard colour of oil, brake dust and muck.

Welcome back BR...

 

[Bevan Price]

If some of the Corbyn supporters get control, everything will eventually look like red flags, maybe even with hammer & sickle included.

I think that any "New BR" passenger unit should be an integrated unit, getting rid of divisions that often lead to poor connections between the current TOCs.

I would also "dump" passenger charters & compensation for late running; I would also dump things like money being shunted between TOCs and NR because of delays, etc. All this just creates unnecessary jobs for accountants / administrators, etc., diverting money that could be better spent on improving trains / track / stations, etc.

Problem is that we would probably still be lumbered with DfT. which would continue to spread shambles everywhere.

 

[tbtc]

I know I shouldn't comment, as Paint Wibble is almost as tiring as Seats Wibble...

...but it's always nice to see the fascination with that brief period of separate "sector" liveries - even if it was only around a decade in almost two hundred years of railway history (mid 1980s to mid 1990s, with lots of "tinkering" in that time - certainly not just one version of each livery!) - some "privatisation" liveries have lasted longer.

Maybe in twenty five years time we'll see the Forum filled with people demanding that Welsh trains go back to that traditional turquoise livery that they used to have, and Northern trains go back to that traditional purple livery that they used to have... maybe Scottish trains were better in that old orange/ green/ purpose livery they had in the good old days... what goes around...

In all seriousness though, I don't think we'll ever go back to "one" railway identity - the railway is far too big for that - any "nationalised" railway would (in reality) be as fragmented as the Civil Service or NHS is today - maybe there'd be one logo but all of the various PTEs and regional assemblies/ parliaments/ QANGOs would want *their* branding on things. Plus, as BR found, some services need a different branding - you wouldn't want your Pendolino in the same livery as your Pacer - one colour scheme wouldn't suit a boxy "local" train *and* a streamlined "intercity" train - and having the "common or garden" Provincial trains in the same colours would devalue the "prestige" of what should be "flagship" trains on the fastest services. There's a reason Tesco have a "basics" and "finest" range.

(of course, the people complaining that new TOCs "waste" money unnecessarily repainting trains every seven years or so would be quick to complain about a nationalised railway painting trains into a further new livery...)

 

[GrimShady]

The return of InterCity is a must these days followed by the Provincial Regions.

 

[JohnR]

I dont think anyone has thought that far ahead.

As to what I think SHOULD happen is a return to the sector split. The actual liveries themselves will be a matter of choice - but all trains to have the double arrow, and be branded "InterCity" etc.... Does Network South East still have the same cachet 25 years on?

 

[43096]

I would also "dump" passenger charters & compensation for late running; I would also dump things like money being shunted between TOCs and NR because of delays, etc. All this just creates unnecessary jobs for accountants / administrators, etc., diverting money that could be better spent on improving trains / track / stations, etc.

So how do you incentivise performance, then? If I buy a ticket and the train is delayed, why shouldn’t I get a refund - the service I paid for has not been delivered as advertised.

 

[Bevan Price]

So how do you incentivise performance, then? If I buy a ticket and the train is delayed, why shouldn’t I get a refund - the service I paid for has not been delivered as advertised.

To me, there are more important things than money. The only requirement should be to get you to your destination.
For example, bringing money into the equation actively encourages them not to hold connections, even for only 1 or 2 minutes.

Yesterday, I was at Huddersfield waiting for a Scarborough - Liverpool service. According to RTT, it should overtake a Leeds - Huddersfield service at Mirfield. The Scarborough service left Leeds 4 minutes late. At Mirfield, the stopper was allowed to run just 1 minute ahead of the "faster" Scarborough service, which then reached Huddersfield 11 minutes late. Worse was to happen, as a Huddersfield - Manchester Piccadilly had been allowed to depart before us, and we were 15 minutes late into Manchester.

If commonsense (pre-delay repayments) had prevailed, the Scarborough service would have been allowed to precede the local at Mirfield, reach Huddersfield 4-5 minutes late, and get ahead of the Huddersfield/Manchester "slow". The Leeds/Huddersfield local had about 20 minutes turnround at Huddersfield, so the next working would be unaffected; the Huddersfield/Manchester service might have been delayed at most by 1-2 minutes, most of which could probably be recovered before Manchester.
So, perhaps someone can understand why I think delay repayments are something of a curse rather than a benefit....

 

[sprinterguy]

I would expect a renationalised railway to mimic the geographical divisions of Network Rail, with each region encompassing both long distance and local services.

I personally feel that the matrix structure of sectorisation was the best model but I don't believe that this is what we would get, and anybody who believes that the Network Southeast or Intercity "Swallow" identities would be resurrected is being blinded by their rose tinted nostalgia goggles. I agree with other views expressed above that, based on the approach to livery specification by the DfT in recent franchise awards, a neutral light grey scheme with minimal adornment would be most likely.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

If British Rail was never privatised, I would think that Intercity and Network SouthEast would have some kind of brand refresh by the early 2000s. I could see Intercity being sub branded by its sectors, and NSE would probably bear its identity more on its subsectors. So "South London Lines" would be on the side of the trains and not the "toothpaste" livery. Interestingly, the Thameslink brand still remains today, which is unapologetically 1970s/1980s BR jargon. As is Crossrail, which dates back from the 70s, so perhaps the Network South East would survive to this day.

Would it work today however? I believe so. You could have the trains red white and blue, but choose a very dark blue for the body sides, a crimson for the doors and maybe a grey stripe and the bottom of the carriage side.

For Intercity, I think it would make sense to have GWR/EMT style sectors and not split the Provincial/Intercity routes into seperate entities. It was going to go a similar way anyway had BR not been given the John Major kiss of death-as I understand it, various longer distance RR routes was to be transfered over to IC.

 

[sprinterguy]

If British Rail was never privatised, I would think that Intercity and Network SouthEast would have some kind of brand refresh by the early 2000s. I could see Intercity being sub branded by its sectors, and NSE would probably bear its identity more on its subsectors. So "South London Lines" would be on the side of the trains and not the "toothpaste" livery. Interestingly, the Thameslink brand still remains today, which is unapologetically 1970s/1980s BR jargon. As is Crossrail, which dates back from the 70s, so perhaps the Network South East would survive to this day.

Indeed, BR frequently updated it's sector era identities - The Intercity 'Executive' and original Network Southeast schemes were each only current for four years before they were superseded/altered. The original Provincial identity didn't last much longer before the sector was rebranded as Regional Railways in 1991. Off topic, but had BR remained I would have expected further minor changes to the Intercity 'Swallow' livery when the HSTs went through their next internal refurbishment, which was proposed to take place between 1995 and 2000, and a major redesign that could have even seen the 'Swallow' identity dropped completely when new stock to replace the HSTs came into service circa 2010 - 2015, ahead of the 50th anniversary of "Intercity" as a brand in 2016. I also wouldn't have been surprised to see further development of the route specific identities with the Network Southeast sector as you suggest, that would ultimately have superseded the "toothpaste" livery.

 

[The Ham]

To me, there are more important things than money. The only requirement should be to get you to your destination.
For example, bringing money into the equation actively encourages them not to hold connections, even for only 1 or 2 minutes.

Yesterday, I was at Huddersfield waiting for a Scarborough - Liverpool service. According to RTT, it should overtake a Leeds - Huddersfield service at Mirfield. The Scarborough service left Leeds 4 minutes late. At Mirfield, the stopper was allowed to run just 1 minute ahead of the "faster" Scarborough service, which then reached Huddersfield 11 minutes late. Worse was to happen, as a Huddersfield - Manchester Piccadilly had been allowed to depart before us, and we were 15 minutes late into Manchester.

If commonsense (pre-delay repayments) had prevailed, the Scarborough service would have been allowed to precede the local at Mirfield, reach Huddersfield 4-5 minutes late, and get ahead of the Huddersfield/Manchester "slow". The Leeds/Huddersfield local had about 20 minutes turnround at Huddersfield, so the next working would be unaffected; the Huddersfield/Manchester service might have been delayed at most by 1-2 minutes, most of which could probably be recovered before Manchester.
So, perhaps someone can understand why I think delay repayments are something of a curse rather than a benefit....

I would argue that holding trains in a network which is a lot less intensively used as it is now is less of a problem.

Of course connections can be beyond the railway, so holding one rail to rail connection could result in several rail to bus connections being missed.

Of course the fact that rail pays out for delays (in some, and increasing, cases as little as 15 minutes) makes rail more attractive than other non personal modes of travel (i.e. buses and flying).

Do I think that the current system had problems, yes. Do in think that they need fixing, yes. Do I think that nationalisation will do that, possibly, but maybe not and it's a big risk on the of chance that it does. Could we make changes to the current system to improve things at a lower risk, quite probably.

It's why IF there was nationalisation it almost certainly would look different to BR and would probably keep the number of liveries broadly the same, just because it's useful for passengers at major stations to identify which train is theirs.

 

[43096]

To me, there are more important things than money. The only requirement should be to get you to your destination.
For example, bringing money into the equation actively encourages them not to hold connections, even for only 1 or 2 minutes.

Yesterday, I was at Huddersfield waiting for a Scarborough - Liverpool service. According to RTT, it should overtake a Leeds - Huddersfield service at Mirfield. The Scarborough service left Leeds 4 minutes late. At Mirfield, the stopper was allowed to run just 1 minute ahead of the "faster" Scarborough service, which then reached Huddersfield 11 minutes late. Worse was to happen, as a Huddersfield - Manchester Piccadilly had been allowed to depart before us, and we were 15 minutes late into Manchester.

If commonsense (pre-delay repayments) had prevailed, the Scarborough service would have been allowed to precede the local at Mirfield, reach Huddersfield 4-5 minutes late, and get ahead of the Huddersfield/Manchester "slow". The Leeds/Huddersfield local had about 20 minutes turnround at Huddersfield, so the next working would be unaffected; the Huddersfield/Manchester service might have been delayed at most by 1-2 minutes, most of which could probably be recovered before Manchester.
So, perhaps someone can understand why I think delay repayments are something of a curse rather than a benefit....

That has actually got nothing to do with delay payments and everything to do with poor regulation. Given the delays that resulted, I would suggest that the delay payments would be more expensive for the way it was dealt with than what should have been done.

So, I'll repeat - how do you incentivise the organisations involved to perform other than by using delay attribution. If there is a better way that would work, let's hear it. But after 25 years of the current delay attribution system, there hasn't been any better offer so far.

 

[option]

To me, there are more important things than money. The only requirement should be to get you to your destination.
For example, bringing money into the equation actively encourages them not to hold connections, even for only 1 or 2 minutes.

Alive? All in one piece? Same year? Same month? Same day?

 

[option]

Well, the TfX & PTE liveries wont be going, as they are not controlled by the operators or DfT, & many of them are part of an integrated look.
I can actually see the existing ones growing & having a greater say & presence in local rail services, eg Nexus in the north east, & new PTE's can be created. They could well move into directly operating the services, they all already directly operate the light-rail systems.

That leaves XC & the inter-city routes, + whatever is not locally branded.
Would make sense for those to be two distinct identities.

 

[GrimShady]

The time to take West Coast and keep East Coast franchises back into public hands is now. There will never be a better time.

 

[Clip]

The time to take West Coast and keep East Coast franchises back into public hands is now. There will never be a better time.

And it will not happen even during this so called 'Better time'. Not whilst this government are in power