Livery under Great British Railways

[Sorcerer]

Would it not be rational to group HS1 and HS2 domestic services under the same brand? Or are they different enough to be differentiated?

Definitely not. HS1 and planned HS2 services have nothing in common bar the use of dedicated high-speed infrastructure, and as a matter of fact the Javelin services wouldn't even be classed as high-speed under the classical definition of high-speed rail which is trains running at least 250km/h (155mph) on newly dedicated track, or 200km/h (125mph) on existing/upgraded infrastructure. HS1 services are merely fast commuter services using a high-speed line while HS2 will be true high-speed intercity trains, so no reason to group them together under one brand.

 

[vuzzeho]

I strongly believe that the removal of brands that GBR will bring is a good thing. It makes things simpler and avoids operator-only tickets. I honestly believe GBR could get by with InterCity (and sub-sub brands like IC CrossCountry and IC High Speed) and a 'Network' brand.

However, I still believe in Regional Express/InterRegional services - so I'm unsure how this would be done with a Network brand. Maybe Network InterRegional as a service type under the brand? (Think: 'Welcome aboard this Network: West Coast InterRegional service to Birmingham New Street', etc)

So maybe:
InterCity (and IC CrossCountry/IC High Speed)
Network: [Region] (service type, so InterRegional and Stopper)

Probably very flawed but that's just something quick.

 

[renegademaster]

'Welcome aboard this Network: West Coast InterRegional service to Birmingham New Street', etc)

You've managed to make the current word salad that is announcements even worse.

I fail to see what benefits putting every service into some arbitrary box other than replace all the old confusion of several different TOCs into the the new confusion of several different service levels that hardly differ from each other but may or may not have ticketing implications.

In 2025 the main way of wayfinding is putting their destination into Google maps and following what their phone tells them to do. Train numbers will help much better in that circumstance than what colour vinyl a train has.


Where you have fast and stopping services to the same destination at the same station you can just copy what London Underground do and do:

London Waterloo (Fast). 5 mins
Calling at...

London Waterloo (Semi-Fast) 12 mins
Calling at....


London Waterloo (Stopping) 16 mins
Calling at...

 

[eldomtom2]

Train numbers will help much better in that circumstance than what colour vinyl a train has.

Are you suggesting train numbers for each service pattern or for each individual service?

 

[vuzzeho]

You've managed to make the current word salad that is announcements even worse.

I fail to see what benefits putting every service into some arbitrary box other than replace all the old confusion of several different TOCs into the the new confusion of several different service levels that hardly differ from each other but may or may not have ticketing implications.

In 2025 the main way of wayfinding is putting their destination into Google maps and following what their phone tells them to do. Train numbers will help much better in that circumstance than what colour vinyl a train has.


Where you have fast and stopping services to the same destination at the same station you can just copy what London Underground do and do:

London Waterloo (Fast). 5 mins
Calling at...

London Waterloo (Semi-Fast) 12 mins
Calling at....


London Waterloo (Stopping) 16 mins
Calling at...

I think I maybe didn't explain myself properly. I'm essentially saying to do what the Met does, but with different names. So, there would be one brand name: Network: [Region]. Then, the service type. Every train would have the Network: [Region] livery and branding, but individual services would be described with these service types. Instead of Fast or Semi Fast, it would be 'InterRegional' or whatever. Every train is branded the same within the GBR sub-brand, but the names InterRegional and Stopper would just be applied to service types in announcements and journey planners.

 

[AzureOtsu]

You've managed to make the current word salad that is announcements even worse.

I fail to see what benefits putting every service into some arbitrary box other than replace all the old confusion of several different TOCs into the the new confusion of several different service levels that hardly differ from each other but may or may not have ticketing implications.

In 2025 the main way of wayfinding is putting their destination into Google maps and following what their phone tells them to do. Train numbers will help much better in that circumstance than what colour vinyl a train has.


Where you have fast and stopping services to the same destination at the same station you can just copy what London Underground do and do:

London Waterloo (Fast). 5 mins
Calling at...

London Waterloo (Semi-Fast) 12 mins
Calling at....


London Waterloo (Stopping) 16 mins
Calling at...

I have a very strong feeling that they will just drop the operator name from the announcements altogether similar to how thameslink has done ever since the introduction of the 377/5s many many years ago. Under network southeast it was simply "Service" as well.

 

[12C]

I would go for categories similar to on the continent (which ironically were inspired by/copied from BR in the first place, especially the IC brand).

Intercity - high speed services on the WCML, ECML, GWML and MML.

InterRegional - Longer distance/limited stop regional routes e.g. TPE, Crosscountry (which is no longer worthy of IC status IMO), and the class 1 services of other regional TOCs.

Regional - slower class 2 stopping services and rural routes.

Metro - high intensity metro style services in and out of large cities.

Livery wise I would go for a standard base livery (maybe silver or grey with a darker window surround) with a different colour stripe below window level for each service level, to make them easily identifiable. E.g. red for IC, green for IR, blue for R and yellow for Metro.

 

[SwindonManor]

Train firms being nationalised will be blocked from carrying new Great British Railways livery until they have come up-to-scratch, particularly on passenger standards, sources say.

This is what the Mirror said. I can't remember where this quote below was said: but

Each region will have a distinct livery.

So, it's unsure right now.
It is interesting that the GBR brand has to be earnt though.

 

[Cross City]

Agreed that a continental-style naming system works best.

Inter City - WCML, ECML, GW, MML, GA London-Norwich
Regional Express - Cross Country routes, Transpennine routes, SE HS1 routes, London Airport Expresses, etc
Regional - Busier medium distance routes like on Thameslink, Brighton Mailine, etc and longer distance local services like Birmingham - Shrewsbury/Hereford or Manchester-Blackpool
Local - As it says on the tin, short routes on stopping services in busy urban cities. Can be branded into something for each city GBR - Birmingham, GBR - Leeds etc.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

All this discussion of "what to call different services" falls down a little when you consider that the British system is quite unusual compared to Europe in that we don't really have different "categories" of service. The same service can leave London as an Inter-City but arrive at Penzance as a local stopper.

From a branding perspective, lumping everything that isn't "Inter-City" or "son of NSE" as simply "Regional" is missing an opportunity to use locally or regionally themed branding and livery. No doubt Wales and Scotland will continue to have their nation-specific branding, the English regions should have the same.

 

[Zomboid]

I think the Japanese have a good system going. They have named lines and then service types. So picking a few main fast line departures from Waterloo you might have the:
xx00 Portsmouth Line Express to Portsmouth Harbour
xx05 Bournemouth Line Express to Weymouth
xx09 Fareham Line Limited to Portsmouth Harbour
xx12 Bournemouth Line Local to Basingstoke
xx15 Portsmouth Line Local to Haslemere
xx20 Exeter Line Limited to Exeter (passing Overton etc)
xx24 Alton Line Local to Alton
and so on.

Might not be the exact pattern at those minutes from Waterloo, but you get the idea. Line names could be more poetic if appropriate.

 

[eldomtom2]

All this discussion of "what to call different services" falls down a little when you consider that the British system is quite unusual compared to Europe in that we don't really have different "categories" of service. The same service can leave London as an Inter-City but arrive at Penzance as a local stopper.

I'm sure you can find edge cases like that everywhere. "Express most of the way, then all-stops at the far ends" is fairly common, and in any case only a couple of London-Penzance trains stop at all Cornwall stations. I think such services easily fit into the "Regional Express" or "Intercity" categories.

 

[renegademaster]

The Netherlands has sprinter and intercity as their two main categories (plus one high speed "intercity direct"" line) . They use different rolling stock and intercity occasionally has a trolley service but that's about it for differences, but fare wise they are treated exactly the same.

The problem with both regional and service level liveries is when something inevitably gets cascaded, it makes the railway look shabby when either a train with incorrect or multiple liveries turns up, as what's happening in GTR land at the moment.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I'm sure you can find edge cases like that everywhere. "Express most of the way, then all-stops at the far ends" is fairly common, and in any case only a couple of London-Penzance trains stop at all Cornwall stations. I think such services easily fit into the "Regional Express" or "Intercity" categories.

My question is what purpose these categories should serve. In the context of this thread on liveries, the cases such as London to Penzance services falling into different categories within a single journey realistically means that we can't have 100% consistency across the whole network. This isn't actually a major problem in my view- a service might usually run with a unit in the "Regional" livery, but a handful of journeys per day use "InterCity" branded stock. This is no different to how it would have been under Sectorisation*, assuming the same fleet usage as today. Although in GWR-land as per the Cornwall example everything is dark green anyway.

*= To be honest in the later Sectorisation period, there was a huge variety of colours on local services in my area- with WYPTE red, "Sprinter/Regional Railways, Pacer blue, two different GMPTE liveries, the odd T&W or Merseyrail interlopers... and that's without any inter-operation between the sectors.

 

[Brubulus]

The Netherlands has sprinter and intercity as their two main categories (plus one high speed "intercity direct"" line) . They use different rolling stock and intercity occasionally has a trolley service but that's about it for differences, but fare wise they are treated exactly the same.

The problem with both regional and service level liveries is when something inevitably gets cascaded, it makes the railway look shabby when either a train with incorrect or multiple liveries turns up, as what's happening in GTR land at the moment.

Agree on how liveries makes cascading and flexibility harder - I would like to see a single common livery, with special liveries for certain trains that could be seen anywhere on the network, for specific regions and lines. A single livery is fine and I am a big supporter of maximum flexibility.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

I think the best way is to have Intercity and NSE.

Then for each city create its own “Overground” (Leeds Overground, Manchester Overground etc)

The “regional” services that radiate out of that city

And maybe some smaller, local branding for any rural line that’s left.

That’s if you were splitting GBR by service type, and not by region, which you could also do:

Great Eastern
Great Northern (ECML, Lincolnshire services, WYPTE and Tyne and Wear)
Midland (Current EMR territory, Leeds to Nottingham and NE-SW XC)
London North Western (self explanatory)
Great Western (self explanatory + XC Manchester to South West services)
NSE (not including the Great Eastern territory)

 

[MPW]

I hope it's not too off topic to ask a question about a specific company... Southeastern are painting their fleet dark blue, but they have also been using heritage green at some stations recently. The dark blue might fit with future GBR scheme but how does the heritage green at stations fit in with both current livery and potential future under GBR? Would there not be a standard colour scheme applied at stations?

 

[Zomboid]

Heritage style stations have been a thing throughout the privatisation era and there's no reason to think they won't continue to be into GBR.

 

[frankmoh]

As most of us on this forum know, GBR is planning to take control of several TOCs and make them state owned again. What I ask is do you guys think the individual companies will keep their branding in the future?

I do mean the future, obviously in 2026 we aren't suddenly going back to NSE, Intercity and Regional Railways all over again (although those liveries would be nice).

 

[sabanda]

Purely speculative, but I feel there will be a somewhat piecemeal application of the brand at first, with GBR essentially acting more as a ticket retailer for the individual TOCs, and with their existing websites/brands continuing to run alongside it.

There would probably be some greater visibility of the brand - things like advertising (maybe similar to the current 'Marmite' Network Rail campaigns) and staff lanyards or signage - but overall I think the customer experience will remain largely as it is for several years post-nationalisation. It wouldn't make sense for the ongoing refurbishment projects and livery updates to be rendered obsolete immediately after nationalisation.

In the long run I expect there will be some differentiation between lines or service groups under the GBR umbrella - but my impression is that the Government haven't actually thought that far ahead yet!

 

[frankmoh]

Purely speculative, but I feel there will be a somewhat piecemeal application of the brand at first, with GBR essentially acting more as a ticket retailer for the individual TOCs, and with their existing websites/brands continuing to run alongside it.

There would probably be some greater visibility of the brand - things like advertising (maybe similar to the current 'Marmite' Network Rail campaigns) and staff lanyards or signage - but overall I think the customer experience will remain largely as it is for several years post-nationalisation. It wouldn't make sense for the ongoing refurbishment projects and livery updates to be rendered obsolete immediately after nationalisation.

In the long run I expect there will be some differentiation between lines or service groups under the GBR umbrella - but my impression is that the Government haven't actually thought that far ahead yet!

The Networker was meant to be the definitive train of Network Southeast when it came out in 1991. Never mind the fact NSE went defunct 3 years later. Hopefully the government can implement GBR well before the next change in leader or party.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jun 2025 ==

I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me. If GBR gets Royal Ascent In parliament and goes ahead as planned in 2027, it’s highly likely to be sometime in the early 2040s before the re-branding nears completion, assuming that changes in policy don’t intervene before then.

Nearly dead thread but...

Using NSE as the example here, the last Southeastern train to be stripped of the NSE livery was in 2007, 10 years after NSE ceased to exist. There's also still lots of NSE stuff on the Northern City Line and also the famous clocks are still in use (at least) in Cannon Street and Waterloo East. With the return of the livery on 465908 then you could say that the brand technically still exists.

It will be at least 20 years before every brand goes away on even the stations no one cares about (looking at you Birkbeck). That is if they do go ahead with rebranding everything and if GBR sticks manages to stick around for 20 years..

 

[MPW]

Heritage style stations have been a thing throughout the privatisation era and there's no reason to think they won't continue to be into GBR.

Thanks

 

[frankmoh]

Thanks

Downham Market and Essex Road on Great Northern spring to mind, with Downham Market being re-NSE'd in 2017.

Why Southeastern themselves (technically the true successor to NSE) don't do this I have no clue.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why Southeastern themselves (technically the true successor to NSE) don't do this I have no clue.

Southeastern is no more a true successor to NSE than Southern, SWR, C2C or GTR. The only one that is only a part successor is WMT because it includes the Birmingham and Liverpool bits.

 

[frankmoh]

Southeastern is no more a true successor to NSE than Southern, SWR, C2C or GTR. The only one that is only a part successor is WMT because it includes the Birmingham and Liverpool bits.

Southeastern (well actually Connex South Eastern) did take over the Southeast sections of Network Southeast... but aside from 465908 and the NSE clock at Charing Cross they really have not done much else.

Also wasn't Southern the successor of Network SouthCentral as opposed to Network Southeast?

 

[Zomboid]

Pretty much everything in the current Network Railcard area was NSE.
Network South Central was the name of the south central franchise before connex took over, but it was very short lived.

 

[miklcct]

Agreed that a continental-style naming system works best.

Inter City - WCML, ECML, GW, MML, GA London-Norwich
Regional Express - Cross Country routes, Transpennine routes, SE HS1 routes, London Airport Expresses, etc
Regional - Busier medium distance routes like on Thameslink, Brighton Mailine, etc and longer distance local services like Birmingham - Shrewsbury/Hereford or Manchester-Blackpool
Local - As it says on the tin, short routes on stopping services in busy urban cities. Can be branded into something for each city GBR - Birmingham, GBR - Leeds etc.

For me I would separate Inter-regional out of Regional Express, creating a total of 5 categories (with another one for HS2), with defined service standards:

Intercity Express (ICE): for the services on HS2.
Intercity (IC): basically everything from the current LNER, EMR Intercity, Avanti, all Intercity Express Train services by GWR, and the Voyager services by CrossCountry, plus EMR London - Norwich, and the Scottish Inter7city as well. They should have proper seat reservations, 2+2 seating in Standard Class, 2+1 seating and dining in First Class.
Interregional (IR): long-distance non-intercity services, for example, Waterloo - Weymouth, Waterloo - Exeter, Kings Cross - Kings Lynn, Liverpool - Norwich, Birmingham - Stansted Airport, Liverpool - Newcastle, Euston - Crewe, etc. They should have both standard class and first class.
Regional Express (RE): medium-distance express services, for example, St Pancras - Corby, St Pancras - Dover, Waterloo - Portsmouth, Bedford - Brighton, Cambridge - Brighton, Peterborough - Horsham, Liverpool - Cleethorpes, Birmingham - Liverpool, Cardiff - Southampton, etc. They can further be branded by the region, like Watelroo - Portsmouth can be a South East Express, Liverpool - Cleethorpes can be a Northern Express, Cardiff - Southampton can be a South West Express, etc.
Regional (R): stopping services outside metropolitan areas, for example, Waterloo - Basingstoke, Charing Cross - Dover, Kings Cross - Cambridge stopper, Liverpool - Manchester Airport stopping service. Similar to Regional Express above, they should also be branded by the region.
Suburban (S): local stopping services within a metropolitan area, which should be devolved. They should be operated like the metro with defined line names and consistent stopping patterns. Examples include London Overground, Merseyrail, West Midland Railways, and the future Bee Network. The stops exclusively served by suburban services should even be taken out of the national GBR ticketing and into the local transport ticketing scheme.

The abbreviations are compatible to the wider European network and still make sense in an English context.

 

[vuzzeho]

Purely speculative, but I feel there will be a somewhat piecemeal application of the brand at first, with GBR essentially acting more as a ticket retailer for the individual TOCs, and with their existing websites/brands continuing to run alongside it.

There would probably be some greater visibility of the brand - things like advertising (maybe similar to the current 'Marmite' Network Rail campaigns) and staff lanyards or signage - but overall I think the customer experience will remain largely as it is for several years post-nationalisation. It wouldn't make sense for the ongoing refurbishment projects and livery updates to be rendered obsolete immediately after nationalisation.

In the long run I expect there will be some differentiation between lines or service groups under the GBR umbrella - but my impression is that the Government haven't actually thought that far ahead yet!

I think the whole 'piecemeal application' aspect of it is a very safe bet. I don't think the TOC websites will keep running - they'll probably become redirects for the GBR site. I feel like once they 'reach GBR levels' the rollout will consist of initially GBR stickers over the existing brand name, and a change in announcements. Full liveries will come later - probably repainting. Maybe vinyl at first, but why not repaint - most trains aren't changing hands anytime soon.

There will be a lot of visibility and advertising - they're already starting along the SWR network. I can't understand why the DfT is letting operators repaint their trains and carry out these big inconsistent refurbs now. For example - c2c is to be nationalised next month - why are they repainting trains into a brand that will soon be obsolete?

There's a team working on the differentiation between lines and service groups - so they're thinking ahead!

 

[Zomboid]

I can't understand why the DfT is letting operators repaint their trains and carry out these big inconsistent refurbs now. For example - c2c is to be nationalised next month - why are they repainting trains into a brand that will soon be obsolete

Because they've got to paint them into something.

 

[frankmoh]

I think the whole 'piecemeal application' aspect of it is a very safe bet. I don't think the TOC websites will keep running - they'll probably become redirects for the GBR site. I feel like once they 'reach GBR levels' the rollout will consist of initially GBR stickers over the existing brand name, and a change in announcements. Full liveries will come later - probably repainting. Maybe vinyl at first, but why not repaint - most trains aren't changing hands anytime soon.

There will be a lot of visibility and advertising - they're already starting along the SWR network. I can't understand why the DfT is letting operators repaint their trains and carry out these big inconsistent refurbs now. For example - c2c is to be nationalised next month - why are they repainting trains into a brand that will soon be obsolete?

There's a team working on the differentiation between lines and service groups - so they're thinking ahead!

Maybe they are taking it slower with rebranding c2c compared to SWR. They could also be doing some sort of simple overlay like with what Connex did to the NSE livery, where 70% was still the original.