An autistic man with some interesting ideas

[Prestige15]

Seen this today and pretty interesting.

He is talking about some kind of an idea or binging back the railways it once was

I have to say this is not bad at all for someone who has disabilities, Good on him

 

[Sad Sprinter]

God I used to spend hours doing maps like that when I was younger. He's autistic too? Maybe that's where my obsessive interest in sketching out new transport plans come from...

I like the video, as well as his logos. But I think his Intercity and NetworkSouthEast rebrands take away the magic from them. The arrows he's done look fresh and modern, but the Swallow...I don't know, there's something so romantic about it. Maybe it's just because it reminds me of what Intercity trains looked like when I was very young. Plus, "Network SouthEast" just sounds to good to rebrand.

I myself am torn between having regional blocs and having services segregated by business type. If you segregated the railways by region, you could have:

(G)BR North Western
BR Midland
BR North Eastern
BR Great Eastern
BR Southern
BR Great Western
BR Caledonian

If segregated by service type, you can have:

Intercity
Network SouthEast
Northern Intercity (transpennine rebrand, other long-distance routes ran by Northern)
Regional (slower services along Intercity trunk routes)
Metro - suburban services in cities other than London, which could benefit from a shared operating philosophy, shared rolling stock etc

I'm not sure which model I would prefer, I think segregating by regional "feels" better, but segregating by operations would give the chance to tailor the service to a specific market more accurately than a monolithic brand identity.

 

[BayPaul]

Personally I'd go for a brand separation mainly by service type, but with regional split for the more local trains too. For example

Intercity - all long distance, high speed services, including those that weren't necessarily part of the old intercity like TPE and HS1 services.
Intercity Connect - a sub brand of intercity, for more long distance semi-fast interregional services, operated by blunt nose trains, such as Cardiff - Portsmouth, and for premier NSE services such as Waterloo - Weymouth, King's X - King's Lynn, Victoria - Brighton etc. This wouldn't be for semi-fast links where there is already a decent intercity service (e.g Cardiff - Penzance or many of the LNWR setvices) as it would be useful to be able to differentiate between service types on these routes.
Sub brands such as Scotrail Intercity where appropriate.

Overground - London inner suburban services, such as SWTs old red train network.
Thameslink - I think this brand makes sense to keep, as it is well known and it's service pattern is good to distinguish from other trains on the lines
XXXX Metro - frequent services in and close to large cities, mainly in regional rail areas, but also where possible in NSE areas (Solent Metro, Coastway Metro etc)
Network Southeast - other services in the former NSE region.
Network XXXX / TfW rail / Scotrail / other local branding - remaining regional rail services that aren't otherwise Metro or Intercity Connect

This would allow marketing of a comprehensive and impressive intercity network nationwide, but also 'local trains for local people'