Great British Railways - First Train in New Livery

[XCTurbostar]

Great to see there will be at least some sub-branding IMO.

It had to have some else it would be impossible to enforce the current fare structure.

 

[Sorcerer]

It's not quite as terrible on a boxy commuter EMU but it's still not a great livery to be honest. If we must have a flag-inspired livery it should be a bit more subtle than this.

 

[Ben Anslow]

Nope don’t like it one bit keep trains as they are

 

[rmHawk765]

I will agree that the 'flag' part needs to be only on the first and last coaches, not least because it otherwise doesn't work with non-even coach counts.

 

[Tramfan]

Agree with the comments that the middle carriages would look much better plain, but it's not as bad as I was expecting

 

[bramling]

387172 appears to have broken cover at Brighton Lovers Walk in a full GBR livery wrap.

Notable is the retention of the 'Southern' name on the sides - Great British Railways | Southern.

IMO it looks utterly ghastly. Everything about it is tacky.

Frankly I’d prefer to keep the mix of liveries we have now, as least when someone designs a horrific one like this then it has a shelf life and is only limited to a small area.

I suppose we’re stuck with this more or less forever, as once something is done that includes an attempt at including a flag it is hard to move on.

Absolutely dread to think what garish interior designs may arise from all this.

 

[XCTurbostar]

We have a trend of these 'one off' liveries appearing and then once the brains behind the operator discuss it, changes are made. SWR had 450111 which was completely different from the later 450/444 liveries with the hashing. WMR's purple is another example.

I suspect the official livery will be different.

 

[Class450/4DES]

Thinking about it, SWR's probably will be:
"Great British Railways | SWR"
As SWR's full name together with GBR's would be too long & a mouthful

I thought about this too, but I think it's maybe more "Great British Railways | South Western".

 

[britishrail375]

I hope this is just a prototype livery and they improve it before plastering it over thousands of trains across the country...

 

[trainmania100]

Works fine to me, not a bad look for electrostars. Reminds me of the first capital connect 377s

Regarding the thread title, is it quite correct this is the first train? I thought there was an azuma in the livery

 

[Lewis10104]

Works fine to me, not a bad look for electrostars. Reminds me of the first capital connect 377s

Regarding the thread title, is it quite correct this is the first train? I thought there was an azuma in the livery

Don’t think there’s been any other trains.

 

[Forty29]

Could be worse! Better than some liveries we've had in the past.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Great to see there will be at least some sub-branding IMO.

I'm not sure this is the final branding.
The regionalisation of GBR isn't defined yet, and some TOC names are likely to disappear.

 

[jupiter]

Looks ok on the end vehicles but it’s a lazy design on the middle ones.

 

[trainmania100]

and some TOC names are likely to disappear.

The way I see it, Southern refers to the region rather than the TOC, so the branding could be South Western, Northern etc. I could be wrong, but that makes sense to me

 

[physics34]

I don't dislike the colours, but the flag emblem should only be on carriages 1 and 4, not all of them. It looks like the Human Centipede as it is.

Agree. A 3, 5, 7 or 9 coach unit is going to look odd.

 

[Zomboid]

Regarding the thread title, is it quite correct this is the first train? I thought there was an azuma in the livery

There's a CGI mock up of an 80x in it. Which looks a lot worse than the 387 does.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 May 2026 ==

Agree. A 3, 5, 7 or 9 coach unit is going to look odd.

Perhaps they'll experiment with leaving the centre car without the flag bit. And then see what everyone else has...

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The way I see it, Southern refers to the region rather than the TOC, so the branding could be South Western, Northern etc. I could be wrong, but that makes sense to me

NR's Southern Region is split into Kent/Sussex/Wessex Routes (plus NR High Speed, aka HS1).
DfT's Southern TOC/brand is part of the wider TSGN/GTR operation.

The original GBR intention was to align the TOCs with NR's Regions, but we still don't know how the GBR Regions will be formed and branded.
Either way, "Southern" is still an ambiguous term in GBR-speak.

 

[jomo]

There was a vst ECS out of lovers walk earlier this afternoon, could that be 387172?

Realtime Trains | 5Y93 1306 Lovers Walk T&R.S.M.D to Selhurst T&R.S.M.D | 19/05/2026

Real-time train running information for 5Y93 1306 departure from Lovers Walk T&R.S.M.D to Selhurst T&R.S.M.D on 19/05/2026. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

Edit
I just checked and that same train just left for London victoria and it was classified as 377439

Realtime Trains | 5C56 1808 Selhurst T&R.S.M.D to London Victoria | 19/05/2026

Real-time train running information for 5C56 1808 departure from Selhurst T&R.S.M.D to London Victoria on 19/05/2026. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

 

[Krystal]

In other news, they had to remove the unit numbers when repainting this unit. This is the solution as of now:

 

[Russel]

We have a trend of these 'one off' liveries appearing and then once the brains behind the operator discuss it, changes are made. SWR had 450111 which was completely different from the later 450/444 liveries with the hashing. WMR's purple is another example.

I suspect the official livery will be different.

I'm inclined to agree here, it's probably a testbed for the livery with alterations to the final livery to be expected, especially when the penny pinchers within the DfT and Treasury realize it will be cheaper to leave the middle vehicles plane blue!

 

[Kilopylae]

In other news, they had to remove the unit numbers when repainting this unit. This is the solution as of now:

Rather fitting for GBR's "grand start".

 

[OneOfThe48]

This livery will have been very tightly specified by the Department for Transport, rather than GTR coming up with a design that makes the middle vehicles to look unbalanced

 

[Leyland Bus]

Rather fitting for GBR's "grand start".

So it is just a vinyl wrap... oh well. In which case, it may evolve before an actual unit is physically painted...

 

[Russel]

This livery will have been very tightly specified by the Department for Transport, rather than GTR coming up with a design that makes the middle vehicles to look unbalanced

Doesn't have to mean it's the final product.

 

[43096]

In other news, they had to remove the unit numbers when repainting this unit. This is the solution as of now:

Those are just the vinyl numbers put in place ready for application. Nothing unusual and nothing to see here.

 

[XCTurbostar]

This livery will have been very tightly specified by the Department for Transport, rather than GTR coming up with a design that makes the middle vehicles to look unbalanced

Given the application specifically for a press event, yes this is almost certain.

Personally, I would like the TOCs to retain some degree of livery specificity. Great British Railways | South Eastern should retain some amount of light blue (as an example)

 

[RichJF]

Hopefully this means all the 377s & 387s get one colour, not a mix of green, red, white & dark green

 

[Driver@swt]

Thinking about it, SWR's probably will be:
"Great British Railways | SWR"
As SWR's full name together with GBR's would be too long & a mouthful

GBR South West

 

[GoneSouth]

Agree. A 3, 5, 7 or 9 coach unit is going to look odd.

Almost as odd as an Avanti Pendolino, That’s whacky and all over the place as well.

i rather like the GWR green, can we keep that instead please?

This It’s like network south east for the utterly confusing 21st century!