Recent content by HYPODERMIC

Wow! Those images are fascinating - thank you for sharing them! Some quick thoughts: 1. Those Virgin ECML proposals are so ludicrously fanciful that I'm baffled that they appear to have been taken seriously by the rail press. Even by the hype standards of early privatisation, a 220mph-capable...

I think it's desperately depressing that five of the six buildings are in London. It's a similar pattern every year, although not usually this extreme. Reading the AJ and other industry sources gives a similar impression of a design community that overwhelmingly focuses on the capital and puts...

Not of great vintage, but I think these phrasings died out about ten years ago - "Please note that this train is today in reverse formation. First class is situated at the rear of the train." I don't think announcers talk about 'train formation' these days. (Edit: apparently they still do!)...

I really like the yellow trams! To my eyes, the current livery looks bright, upbeat, and modern. I vaguely recall reading that the designers chose yellow because they believed it would add a splash of colour that would bright up a city stereotypically associated with gloomy clouds and red...

What a fascinating photo! I find something a bit eerily/unsettling about the BR double-arrow on steam locomotives - there's something very uncanny/anachronistic about it. I love both steam and the double-arrow symbol, but the combination of two feels weird.

While I still feel that GBR signage could use a splash/strip of colour - I still feel it looks a little too austere and 1970s at times - I do think it looks very smart and very clear in this example you've mocked up. This is a big improvement over most TOC signage/wayfinding, at least in terms...

Hmm. I really like Rail Alphabet 2 itself - it's a very crisp and clear typeface which successfully modernises the original. It looks excellent in the white-on-black trial signs at New Street. I do quite like the smaller directional/wayfinding signs at London Euston and Coventry as well...

I genuinely really like "we're getting there", for precisely the reason that it combines honesty, self-deprecating humour, and a pun on transport. The alternative often seems to be meaningless, feel-good, desperately inoffensive, corporate nonsense like "believe in better" (Sky), "I'm loving...

My gut instinct is that this is just a quick thing done to give the Transition Team a brand mark. GBRTT seems to be an extremely small team grappling with absolutely foundational industry issues - ie the size, shape and structure of the future railway. I get the impression that the work to...

I think it looks pretty cool, as long as it's only used as a marketing logo. I agree the blue should be extended to the edge of the arrows. I wouldn't want to see it used for wayfinding/signage/operational purposes, and I'm almost certain it won't be, because it's too cluttered/busy for those...

Is it true that the railway as a whole doesn't even really know this for sure? I'm sure I remember hearing somewhere that Northern were 'experimenting' (!!!) with proper profit-and-loss accounting on one of their north-east coastal lines to try and figure out actually what the route/service...

You could say the same about the trains. Why not have them all in plain white? After all, making trains look nice is unnecessary and costs money too... Sometimes I think there's a lingering view (among a small minority) in the industry that the railway should really be engineering-led again...

I think the problems with RA2 aren't the typeface itself, or even the use of black on white, it's the combination of: not using a bold enough font/weight on signs, particularly station names the absence of any colour on signage I don't think you need full colour signage - ala London Midland...

The evidence that masks reduce infection rates is quite a bit stronger than some people on here seem to be suggesting. So there is plausible evidence that even cheap surgical masks do have some statistically significant effect on reducing the spread of coronaviruses and influenzas. It is...

Wow, those references to "InterCity" are kind of surreal. For a moment there I could imagine I had stepped into the alternate timeline where BR was never privatised. I know it's technically the franchise name, but "InterCity appear willing to cut..." really takes me back to the 90s!