Great British Railways: Station identity and livery unveiling (09/12/25)

[Class 800]

Well, if that's the case I feel no guilt whatsoever calling it absolute rubbish. In fact I feel more guilt at insulting graphic designers for suggesting one could've potentially designed this new livery.

I should’ve known this was going to be a virtue signaling cost cutting disaster

 

[Dougal2345]

I've never seen "dazzle ship" camouflage applied to trains before.

 

[EdChap]

Two thoughts:

How will the livery work on the Class 755 units regarding the short power car?

and

What is likely to be the first unit to appear in the new livery? Any ideas?

 

[mattmattmatt]

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

 

[RUK]

Two thoughts:

How will the livery work on the Class 755 units regarding the short power car?

and

What is likely to be the first unit to appear in the new livery? Any ideas?

They could end up being linked, since they’ve said that operators will get the GBR branding as they earn it, and Greater Anglia perform well.

I guess probably maybe a Class 80x (London North Eastern Railway?) and a Desiro UK (South Western Railway?) of some description though, given that’s what they’ve seemingly got in the mock-ups shown so far.

The number in the mock-up says 802 200, presumably for Rail 200, but that doesn’t exist, but maybe a Class 802/2, maybe 802 201, since they’re 5-car, as shown in the mock-up? They could re-number one of the 802/2s to show 802 200. Would take less time to do than a 9-car train, as well.

But TransPennine Express, who have the Class 802/2s, don’t perform as well as LNER do. LNER cover a greater distance, to show the livery, but TPE is localised in the North, which the Government won’t want to appear being left behind by Great British Railways. But I don’t recall that any TPE or Northern trains have had the “GBR - coming soon” sticker, which SWR (and Greater Anglia and c2c) do, even though all 3 of TPE, Northern, and SWR haven’t had great performance - but then again, neither have LNER, I believe.

SouthEastern haven’t had the sticker yet either, I believe - only the ones which have been nationalised since the new Government have. I think that’s all the nationalised operators so far - I can’t remember if Thameslink, Southern, and Great Northern are nationalised, yet.

 

[Thirteen]

I imagine it'll better on some rolling stock but I'm not keen on it.

I assume the devolved railway operators like Merseyrail, ARL, Elizabeth Line won't be forced to use it.

 

[Crithylum]

They could end up being linked, since they’ve said that operators will get the GBR branding as they earn it, and Greater Anglia perform well.

FFS (I use GA a decent amount)

 

[nilvaj395]

I imagine it'll better on some rolling stock but I'm not keen on it.

I assume the devolved railway operators like Merseyrail, ARL, Elizabeth Line won't be forced to use it.

I think you are correct in your assumption. And for once, I am actually glad a livery that is actually good like Merseyrail won't be ruined for this

 

[Thirteen]

I think you are correct in your assumption. And for once, I am actually glad a livery that is actually good like Merseyrail won't be ruined for this

i have my finger crossed TfL get the Great Northern services so it's spared from the GBR livery.

 

[occone]

It's a Poundland TransPennine Express!

Bleh!

 

[Ellwill]

The BBC says this was produced in house by DaFT serpents, who probably used generative AI pretty heavily to 'assist' them...

Sky have gone a little further and have quoted a source from within the department:

Both designs have been created in-house by the DfT to save taxpayers' money, while one person at the department described the new train livery as "striking and memorable".

 

[sad1e]

Sky have gone a little further and have quoted a source from within the department

Memorable for sure , but for the right reasons I'm not so sure about that.

 

[gabrielhj07]

Possibly the worst thing I’ve seen all afternoon. Have budget cuts in the DfT’s crayon department left only these colours?

The only “sense of motion” this will invoke is an involuntary one from the bowels, or is it a subtle reference to the 800’s ride quality?

Sectorisation showed us that primary colours and straight lines can work well together, at least when the designers are older than 5. They don’t have to recreate BR if they really don’t want to, but a couple of longitudinal straight lines of colour, wouldn’t go amiss on a train.

 

[HighlandStorm]

That is beyond hideous.

The mock up of the class 80x full train certainly looks hideous as a whole because it doesn't flow and the way they attempt to mirror image the livery mid-train just ends up in a shambles.

That said, if just the end vehicles had this livery with the intermediate cars had a plain livery - then I think it would flip from hideous mess to actually quite smart. An abstract interpretation of a portion of the flag pointing towards the front of the train, which fundamentally is what the ScotRail 'SpotRail' livery is, and that works. Just don't over do it.

However, I do have to say GBR or not, killing off powerful brands like GWR and LNER seems to be a case of shooting oneself in the foot. I don't think everything should carry one livery, even within ScotRail, the HSTs carry a distinctive livery so intercity services stand apart.

 

[Wolfie]

There were folk at Brum New Street putting various temporary signage up tonight.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Dec 2025 ==

Sky have gone a little further and have quoted a source from within the department:

An interesting way of saying hideous old crap.... If the budget was zero they still spent too much!

 

[Andyh82]

According to the BBC news article linked below, the design was created in-house rather than by a design consultancy...

BBC News - Branding and logo for Great British Railways unveiled

Branding and logo for Great British Railways unveiled

The new red, white and blue branding mirrors the colours of the Union Flag, and will start to appear from next year.

www.bbc.com

And you can tell.

I know the likes of Ray Stenning get criticism but a proper design agency wouldn’t have designed this mess

It seems that because the government are hoping everyone is happy with the nationalisation element, anything else is irrelevant. ‘Who cares about the livery, the train is now owned by you’

I had a feeling they’d go for one single livery for literally everything. They’ve forgotten that even in BR days, Intercity was branded differently. I’m still wondering how they will promote the railways if it’s one size fits all. One TV advert promoting mundane commuter trips into Cannon Street and long distance leisure trips to Edinburgh all at the same time

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I actually think it’d look fine if they lost the GBR right at the front near the cabs, which makes it look overbranded.

 

[Sealink]

Deleted

 

[WirralLine]

I quite like it personally, but do echo comments further back regarding only having it on the end coaches and leaving middle coaches more plain.

 

[nilvaj395]

I hate how bad the app mock-up looks. It genuinely looks like something you would see made by GBNews, and that's not a good thing

Sidenote, is it me, or does this IET picture look like Train Sim World? These were a part of the pictures from the BBC Article.

 

[physics34]

I dont think complaints about the union flag being used are robust worries..nothing wrong with that... but the design itself is a worry.
They have time to listen to criticism and amend it. Sadly though thats not something the DfT seem to do very well, listening!

 

[Bornin1980s]

I hate how bad the app mock-up looks. It genuinely looks like something you would see made by GBNews, and that's not a good thing

Sidenote, is it me, or does this IET picture look like Train Sim World? These were a part of the pictures from the BBC Article.

Yes, it does look worryingly 'alt right.'

As for your second point, they are apparently going to show it through Train Sim World 6.

 

[BurtonM]

Dire. Looks cheap and somehow even worse than Northern’s livery IMO.
lost for words that that’s the best they could do.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Dec 2025 ==

I wonder what the oldest piece of rolling stock this gets put on will be , Northern 150 maybe?

only if Northern manage to pass the quality threshold for GBR branding….

 

[nilvaj395]

Yes, it does look worryingly 'alt right.'

As for your second point, they are apparently going to show it through Train Sim World 6.

I thought so about the TSW 6, I could tell due to the general look of it. To be fair, leveraging technology in such a way to do such a thing is cool. It does not change my feelings about the livery, and I feel bad for the poor member of DfT staff who had to put that into TSW 6, but the idea to show it off is cool.

With a livery this complex, what would actually happen if an operator had the livery applied and then lost the 'standards'? Does this mean we would be ripping this livery off of the train and then back on once they re-meet the standards?

 

[Bradford1]

No train has any been repainted with this yet. Given the response, it should be quietly altered.

 

[treasury brain]

Most other national operators don’t feel the need to flagshag this much. It’s just tacky. Look at other brands that use the union jack, say british airways, mostly white with blue and red bits not a wall to wall flag. Also if this is based on the transpennine livery what a terrible iteration.

 

[Noddy]

And here I was hoping that maybe in my lifetime I would see the InterCity Swallow fly high on the 800 series once again. I never got to be alive for when it was around.

There’s a huge amount of nostalgia around the ‘renationalisation’ of Britains Railway typified by this post. Am I the only one who remembers how utterly rubbish it was as a passenger? Even worse if you wanted to use it for freight. No normal passenger cares that much about the branding, they care about their trains to turning up on time and being fairly priced.

 

[b0b]

There’s a huge amount of nostalgia around the ‘renationalisation’ of Britains Railway typified by this post. Am I the only one who remembers how utterly rubbish it was as a passenger? Even worse if you wanted to use it for freight. No normal passenger cares that much about the branding, they care about their trains to turning up on time and being fairly priced.

Not the OP but in the early 90s when I would use Intercity to go home and NSE to commute, I remember it being very decent. Rubbish was not how I would describe my experience.

 

[Noddy]

Not the OP but in the early 90s when I would use Intercity to go home and NSE to commute, I remember it being very decent. Rubbish was not how I would describe my experience.

What like this?

The fact that no punctuality/reliability figures were recorded before 1992 is massively telling.

 

[Snow1964]

DfT website has gained new set of GBR links this morning

GBR: improvements train operators in public ownership are making for customers

Train operators in public ownership are demonstrating they are putting passengers first, by delivering customer improvements.

www.gov.uk

This one has the photo / mock up

All change: The future of British trains arrives as government reforms broken railways

With fares frozen, a bold new look and fundamental reforms becoming law, government is building a railway Britain can rely on and be proud of.

www.gov.uk

Says brand will be on display at London Bridge today