Great British Railways livery: Alternative suggestions/variations

[Bletchleyite]

Is GBR going to be running significant services in Scotland? Yes, therefore calling it TransportForEngland isn't going to make any sense.

(reply from non speculative thread as this is speculative)

Does anyone really object to TfW showing up at Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime St, or to ScotRail showing up in Carlisle? Or a TGV within Germany or an ICE in Paris or Amsterdam? Or an OeBB Nightjet all over the place?

It's just an international train branded in the livery of the country that manages it. You get that all over Europe. And given that the trains operated by English TOCs within Scotland and Wales are primarily used to go to England (London, specifically, though in the case of XC also Birmingham etc) is that not actually helpful?

Network Rail being called Rail England might be an issue perhaps, but I don't see any reason why, even though it is one organisation, the infrastructure operator has to be branded the same as the train operator, following Belgium it could be called InfraGB or something if we don't want to keep the Network Rail name. What matters is that they work closely enough together that they act as one, and that's structural and nothing to do with branding, as Roger Ford has pointed out multiple times.

 

[Krokodil]

Three crude attempts at a Union Flag livery that works better than the official one.

My first attempt came out looking rather Norweigan:

I tried to rectify that with the next one:

But then I decided to keep the diagonal for the front of the train:

 

[nilvaj395]

(reply from non speculative thread as this is speculative)

Does anyone really object to TfW showing up at Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime St, or to ScotRail showing up in Carlisle? Or a TGV within Germany or an ICE in Paris or Amsterdam? Or an OeBB Nightjet all over the place?

It's just an international train branded in the livery of the country that manages it. You get that all over Europe. And given that the trains operated by English TOCs within Scotland and Wales are primarily used to go to England (London, specifically, though in the case of XC also Birmingham etc) is that not actually helpful?

Network Rail being called Rail England might be an issue perhaps, but I don't see any reason why, even though it is one organisation, the infrastructure operator has to be branded the same as the train operator, following Belgium it could be called InfraGB or something if we don't want to keep the Network Rail name. What matters is that they work closely enough together that they act as one, and that's structural and nothing to do with branding, as Roger Ford has pointed out multiple times.

That was exactly my thoughts. TfW does the exact same when running into England but they don't have to be called English for that. With the exception of some XC and LNER services, nothing runs much further than Edinburgh or Glasgow anyway so it's not like these trains are spending all their time in Scotland while being branded as English, they always are on trains / services that have come from England at the bare minimum.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==

Well, I have spent part of every year in Norway since 1982. Despite Norway’s national colours being red, white and blue, the Norwegian national train operator has recently re-launched and re-branded their passenger train services as ‘Vy’ - meaning view, featuring a beautiful semi-metallic darkish teal green.

With beautiful minimalist typography, and a thoughtfully executed interior refresh with carefully chosen colour-coordinated the result is professional, has gravitas and creates a wonderful travelling environment.

VY does look really executive and nice.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's more than slightly reminiscent of the pre-TfL DLR livery.

 

[Krokodil]

Does anyone really object to TfW showing up at Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime St

Some on here would. I remember one suggestion that LNW should operate the Chester-Crewe shuttle on the basis that it is entirely in England, despite the fact that operationally the service fits in very well at TfW and would not with LNW.

Or a TGV within Germany or an ICE in Paris or Amsterdam? Or an OeBB Nightjet all over the place?

The Swiss object to ICEs, but that is probably more down to their chronically poor timekeeping.

 

[renegademaster]

(reply from non speculative thread as this is speculative)

Does anyone really object to TfW showing up at Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime St, or to ScotRail showing up in Carlisle? Or a TGV within Germany or an ICE in Paris or Amsterdam? Or an OeBB Nightjet all over the place?

It's just an international train branded in the livery of the country that manages it. You get that all over Europe. And given that the trains operated by English TOCs within Scotland and Wales are primarily used to go to England (London, specifically, though in the case of XC also Birmingham etc) is that not actually helpful?

Network Rail being called Rail England might be an issue perhaps, but I don't see any reason why, even though it is one organisation, the infrastructure operator has to be branded the same as the train operator, following Belgium it could be called InfraGB or something if we don't want to keep the Network Rail name. What matters is that they work closely enough together that they act as one, and that's structural and nothing to do with branding, as Roger Ford has pointed out multiple times.

Theirs little fare integration between European countries, nobody expects to buy a ticket from a small town in France to a small town in Germany easily.

At the moment you can easily get a ticket between say a London Overground station and ScotRail station as both fall under ATOC trading as National Rail.

GBR will take over the responsibilities of ATOC for ticketing etc , while branding it as Rail England would imply that you can't buy tickets including ScotRail or TfW legs under them, as many "normies" now believe you can't use the Southern website to buy a ticket that takes you to a Southeastern station or buy a season ticket between station.

Ideally as far as the public are concerned ScotRail/TfW/TfGM/TfL should appear as regions of a bigger company, all though that would annoy devolved leaders as it would reduce their effectiveness as vanity projects

 

[Krokodil]

GBR will take over the responsibilities of ATOC for ticketing etc , while branding it as Rail England would imply that you can't buy tickets including ScotRail or TfW legs under them, as many "normies" now believe you can't use the Southern website to buy a ticket that takes you to a Southeastern station or buy a season ticket between station.

If you just brand your ticketing site "National Rail" then that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[MoominAndChips]

If we have to cover a train in red and blue, bring back GNER.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you just brand your ticketing site "National Rail" then that shouldn't be an issue.

TBH I'd have branded the whole thing as that and avoided the whole flag-waving thing.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==

Theirs little fare integration between European countries, nobody expects to buy a ticket from a small town in France to a small town in Germany easily.

Which is a sad loss, as you used to be able to do exactly that in the 1990s before pretty much all the international stuff became "global fare". I have somewhere in my collection (don't know where) a through ticket from Charing Cross to Hamburg Hbf including the ferry from 1999, it could probably have been done through from Aughton Park if I'd thought about it though the UK TCV (no idea what that stands for but no doubt something in French) fares were quite expensive so that may not have been advantageous.

 

[renegademaster]

If you just brand your ticketing site "National Rail" then that shouldn't be an issue.

TBH I'd have branded the whole thing as that and avoided the whole flag-waving thing.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==



Which is a sad loss, as you used to be able to do exactly that in the 1990s before pretty much all the international stuff became "global fare". I have somewhere in my collection (don't know where) a through ticket from Charing Cross to Hamburg Hbf including the ferry from 1999, it could probably have been done through from Aughton Park if I'd thought about it though the UK TCV (no idea what that stands for but no doubt something in French) fares were quite expensive so that may not have been advantageous.

England, Wales and Scotland are considered by separatists as different nations so you'd still have the exact same problem

 

[gg1]

All of these are improvements on the version GBR released. Most of them do allude to the Union Flag (perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned when there's a degree of subtletly to it) but without slapping you in the face with it like the original version.

From an aesthetic point of view, it's essential IMO that any curved, diagonal or swooshy patterns are confined to the driving vehicles only, just looks messy when applied to the centre cars of a unit.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There's now this new thread (thanks @yorkie) that is probably more relevant to the way it seems to be starting to spin off about how integrated it should be with Wales/Scotland's passenger operations:

Great British Railways - what should be the remit?

People are mentioning the GBR branding in Scotland and Wales and suggesting that it's a bad thing. Is everyone forgetting that Scotland and Wales are part of Britain? Surely the branding should spread into those areas if we want a "joined-up" railway.

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Krokodil]

England, Wales and Scotland are considered by separatists as different nations so you'd still have the exact same problem

No you wouldn't. This is about whether people would recognise that a ticket bought from GBR's site is valid on TfW/Scotrail. No one gets confused in that respect by "National Rail".

If someone is being awkward for the sake of it, that's their loss.

 

[Sorcerer]

I mean in retrospect ours are similar , I wanted to stick with the more angular design, but cutting out that 'in your face aspect' as we saw from the GBR design. The white offset at the bottom being wider towards the vestibule, started as just trying to draw an odd white line as a detail but then I decided I would fill it in and make it a pattern, which could also flow very nicely into the next carriage. An ongoing pattern of sorts is something I enjoy, such as how the VTEC 91 livery framed each coach with the red flow pattern.

I might be talking utter rubbish, but you could easily sub out these colours in this pattern to make regional variations.

View attachment 193626

I put the GBR text in the larger white space towards the vestibule, and any other local region logos can go in the other spaces (this may vary per train). This might be similar to how German trains often carry the local region logo in addition to the DB logo somewhere along the sides of the train. In the original Union Jack idea, the text and/or logo would go in the middle of the train, but either is an option depending on personal preference, I much prefer putting it towards the end of each coach rather than in the middle like TfW does.

View attachment 193627
^ (This would also be a good contender for a purely English-based livery I guess)

View attachment 193629
(I dont know what this colour might be for, I would say GWR but I like the GWR livery as is, maybe this is an instance where you could replace the white with more green much like the existing livery.

I think Intercity would definitely, from a consistency standpoint not be too radically different and yet more 'upmarket' so to speak, the redesigned swallow with tweaks would be perfect. It is difficult to put it onto an IET though due to the IET's curvy nature at the front. My first thought was something along the lines of what Eurostar did with the 373's/374's.

I love the red one most and it would fit nicely with LNER, and the green second which would fit nicely for GWR. The black, white and yellow seems like a local authority service like Merseyrail or Tyne and Wear. It might do wonders hiding dirt but not sure how the black would manage in warm summer days even with modern air conditioning. They're all really good though!

These are amazing! Excellent work.

Can you produce some versions where the white and blue are swapped?

Thank you for the praises! Unfortunately the white and blue swapping doesn't work quite as well because red and blue without the white to break it up doesn't look that great, but I might upload some soon anyway just for fun.

Three crude attempts at a Union Flag livery that works better than the official one.

My first attempt came out looking rather Norweigan:
View attachment 193654
I tried to rectify that with the next one:
View attachment 193653
But then I decided to keep the diagonal for the front of the train:
View attachment 193652

Reminds me a little bit of Bangkok's old Airport Rail Link livery, and the 80x would definitely fit in nicely on the Thai network as well with some of it's second-hand British trains. Good work for a crude attempt, especially when up against the actual design.

 

[BeijingDave]

Really GB News (and GBR) have stolen our 2012 Olympic outfits, designed by Stella McCartney, which definitely weren't racist or alt-right.

 

[KNN]

Really GB News (and GBR) have stolen our 2012 Olympic outfits, designed by Stella McCartney, which definitely weren't racist or alt-right.

Indeed. And she took it from the flag, which shouldn't be allowed to be owned by the worst people in the country.

They could do better with the design but it's fine isn't it, no more no less.

 

[BeijingDave]

Reclaim the flag and its colours, so the morons have to turn to the feldgrau of the Waffen SS and the black, red and white armband of the National Socialists.

 

[nilvaj395]

I love the red one most and it would fit nicely with LNER, and the green second which would fit nicely for GWR. The black, white and yellow seems like a local authority service like Merseyrail or Tyne and Wear. It might do wonders hiding dirt but not sure how the black would manage in warm summer days even with modern air conditioning. They're all really good though!


Thank you for the praises! Unfortunately the white and blue swapping doesn't work quite as well because red and blue without the white to break it up doesn't look that great, but I might upload some soon anyway just for fun.


Reminds me a little bit of Bangkok's old Airport Rail Link livery, and the 80x would definitely fit in nicely on the Thai network as well with some of it's second-hand British trains. Good work for a crude attempt, especially when up against the actual design.

The yellow and black was meant to be Bee Network, although slapping a 331 in Bee Network yellow much like the buses would still be better than slapping it in GBR

You could probably get away with a grey to help air conditioning , it was just a test to see if you could use different colour combos while having that GBR flag esque design

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==

This is a weird situation for the UK when it comes to devolved nations, we are not nessecarily in an easy position to just slap everything in GBR because of TfW and ScotRail. Would it have been easier if SR and TfW could've just been also GBR-ified, even though I would never do that because TfW and ScotRail are actually well run.

To be honest, I much prefer National Rail as a name as it is. I wish GBR was just the brand when it comes to the trains and stations and nothing else. Like others as said it might look like someone will now not know they could buy their Scottish tickets from the GBR site or vice-versa. I think the Scottish and Welsh sites being a skin of GBR would be an option to lower this confusion but I very much love the TfW site as it is and the ScotRail site is great too.

 

[birchesgreen]

Reclaim the flag and its colours, so the morons have to turn to the feldgrau of the Waffen SS and the black, red and white armband of the National Socialists.

That might look pretty cool on a Class 37

 

[BeijingDave]

That might look pretty cool on a Class 37

ANYTHING looks cool on a class 37, even all yellow.

 

[rattyben]

I suspect this is version 1 to gauge public reaction.

I hope the final version distinguishes regional and intercity services appropriately.

They probably should apply it to maybe a single LNER train so people can see it in real life and so people can get a sense that some progress is being made.

10 years does seem a somewhat drawn out timeline for this, given it’s the first thing people see.

 

[Krokodil]

I saw a photo of a Red Arrows Hawk and came up with three more ideas:

 

[Bletchleyite]

Despite the Union Flag that screams American to me!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==

They probably should apply it to maybe a single LNER train so people can see it in real life and so people can get a sense that some progress is being made.

It's mentioned on the other thread that LNER collaborated on it, which is odd because it doesn't fit the 80x at all (it looks a lot less awful on a square fronted unit like the 350 example).

 

[Mike Machin]

Whilst I’m not entirely against the new proposed livery and branding, going down the patriotic/nationalistic approach is really boring and tiresome when, with a little less jingoism we could create something completely fresh yet timeless and with real design flair.

When the amount of money to be spent in rolling-out the re-branding is going to be enormous over the next decade, a relatively modest amount of money spent with a leading design consultancy would have been money well spent.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, Norway’s state-run passenger train network is undergoing a thorough root and branch re-branding exercise and they have employed real Scandinavian flair and have resisted the temptation of going down the obvious route of using their national colours. And, it should be noted, the Norwegians are a very patriotic flag-waving population!

If only we could just pause, look at what we are trying to achieve long-term and somehow realise that swooshes, stripes and random angled blocks of bright colours is just so ‘old hat.’ Take a look at what they are achieving, integrating trains, uniforms, websites/apps etc and it’s just so aspirational and inspiring.

Quiet, friendly, authoritative, reassuring, exciting yet calming with real panache. Compare this with GBR’s proposals which are noisy, aggressive, agitating, brash and about 20 years out of date.

GBR is trying too hard - the lesson should be less is more!

 

[Class 323 Fan]

I do like the ends of the train, but I don’t like all coaches having the same design, it ruins the livery, the could just rather make it flow through or have little GBR logo on the train instead in a lighter colour

 

[Uncle Buck]

No. We've got to get away from these grubby white/insipid grey liveries. Also, they attract graffiti vandals.

Agreed. “Less is a bore”. A white train is a bland train.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==

I would much prefer 'Rail England' if we really can no longer have British Rail anymore. Besides, it probably better suits the fact that this is purely an England rebrand as TfW and SR are staying.

“Great British Railways” is pompous, cumbersome and tacky: it reminds me of “Great British seaside” or “Great British fish and chips”. “British Rail” sounds sleeker.

 

[Peter Wilde]

I don't like the present concept that every single train in GB should have the same livery. That can be unhelpful for passengers, especially commuters and others who travel regularly.

To my mind South West Trains got it right, to a large extent. On the suburban network, catching a train from a busy London station, one knew that the train one wanted was red, while for long distances, it would be white, and for intemediate semi-fast services, it would be blue. Not 100% reliable but the wrong colour train turning up was a good clue to wake up and double-check the destination. Especially useful at times of disruption with the destination indicators unreliable.

Other problems with deciding to a go for a one-size-fits-all livery are:

1. Nothing looks equally good on different types of stock - locos being different from commuter stock and long distance passenger trains being different again. For example, see the awkward compromise in the just-revealed GBR livery, where the direction of “flow” has to change between the 3rd and 4th car of a 5 car unit. Surely guaranteed to look a mess, especially if a defective vehicle has to be knocked out and replaced with one facing the other way; and

2. Livery ideas are subject to fashions and marketing and have a short shelf life. BR for example went through lots and lots of very different ones in its 40 or so years of existence. Given that expense and economy mean that trains are only repainted/revinyled when they get tatty, it’s likely that GBR will never actually achieve a uniform look for all vehicles in all its passenger trains.

 

[StewLane]

Reminds me of the wartime Dazzle livery on warships.
Not sure that the doors stand out now which some users may find difficult.

 

[generalnerd]

I don't like the present concept that every single train in GB should have the same livery. That can be unhelpful for passengers, especially commuters and others who travel regularly.

To my mind South West Trains got it right, to a large extent. On the suburban network, catching a train from a busy London station, one knew that the train one wanted was red, while for long distances, it would be white, and for intemediate semi-fast services, it would be blue. Not 100% reliable but the wrong colour train turning up was a good clue to wake up and double-check the destination. Especially useful at times of disruption with the destination indicators unreliable.

I complete agree. They should have a general style guide and then vary that per area or style of operations.

I think the flag colours shouldn’t be used on all trains, only intercity trains where they fit better, and that more muted tones should be used on the everyday commuter trains (maybe follow a similar livery pattern but with different colours)

I’ll draw out what I mean because I can’t for the life of me use design programmes.

 

[nilvaj395]

Agreed. “Less is a bore”. A white train is a bland train.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==


“Great British Railways” is pompous, cumbersome and tacky: it reminds me of “Great British seaside” or “Great British fish and chips”. “British Rail” sounds sleeker.

Absolutely, but the Government doesn't want to bring that back because it would make sense. It always has to be GREATER because it's this government trying* to look compotent

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Dec 2025 ==

Whilst I’m not entirely against the new proposed livery and branding, going down the patriotic/nationalistic approach is really boring and tiresome when, with a little less jingoism we could create something completely fresh yet timeless and with real design flair.

When the amount of money to be spent in rolling-out the re-branding is going to be enormous over the next decade, a relatively modest amount of money spent with a leading design consultancy would have been money well spent.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, Norway’s state-run passenger train network is undergoing a thorough root and branch re-branding exercise and they have employed real Scandinavian flair and have resisted the temptation of going down the obvious route of using their national colours. And, it should be noted, the Norwegians are a very patriotic flag-waving population!

If only we could just pause, look at what we are trying to achieve long-term and somehow realise that swooshes, stripes and random angled blocks of bright colours is just so ‘old hat.’ Take a look at what they are achieving, integrating trains, uniforms, websites/apps etc and it’s just so aspirational and inspiring.

Quiet, friendly, authoritative, reassuring, exciting yet calming with real panache. Compare this with GBR’s proposals which are noisy, aggressive, agitating, brash and about 20 years out of date.

GBR is trying too hard - the lesson should be less is more!

Absolutely that idea, we have quite literally a new slate and yet won't take advantage of it because that's just the nature of everything in the UK these days.