TV TOC adverts

[SwindonManor]

I have seen a post literally a few moments ago - about LNER's advert, and it made me wonder. What is (in your opinion) your favourite advert from TOCs? Mine personally is "Turbo" the Avanti turtle (these can be past or present!)

Some notable ones to get your brain fired up:
LNER - Elanor
Avanti - Turbo
GWR - "Five"
FGW - Be a Great Westerner

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Mine personally is "Turbo" the Avanti turtle (these can be past or present!)

Agreed

However there is only 1 video ad I can recall ever seeeing (if I can't block the ads I don't use it) which is Avanti's.
I was in Manchester and one of those vertical ad boards was there and it was just a roller skating turtle and I was very suprised when it was an Avanti ad.

 

[Snow1964]

in West Wiltshire (with local news from Bristol) get the GWR Five adverts, and more rarely some SWR adverts with a animated seagull and pigeon.

No one else bothers to advertise, although if use some of the internet TV (ITVx, 4 and 5) sometimes get irrelevant ones eg TfL.

Fairly sure one of the GWR five adverts has an animated 6 or 7car IET wizz past a beach of yellow sand

 

[New York Giant]

Never understood why no TOC used KLF's Last Train To Trancentral as backing music.

 

[Joe Paxton]

British Rail - Britain's Railway (the 'Concerto' advert of 1988)

 

[Leyland Bus]

British Rail - Britain's Railway (the 'Concerto' advert of 1988)

Will forever be the best advert full stop..! (IMHO!!)

 

[Darandio]

Never understood why no TOC used KLF's Last Train To Trancentral as backing music.

For a couple of decades KLF didn't want their music even to be streamed/downloaded, might have been hard to get rights. They also certainly weren't bothered about money!

 

[MerlinRail 804]

Didn’t Chiltern and Virgin have a bit of an advertising war over the years?

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Also always loved this one

 

[Snow1964]

Some old BR ones.

The first one (from 1969) has a seagull that resembles the one SWR now use (did SWR copy it?).
The 4th shows proper food and orange seats, 1970s intercity

Apparently this BR advert was shown on Christmas Day 1978, was recorded on a VCR, pure nostalgia of defunct bits of BR

 

[800002]

Didn’t Chiltern and Virgin have a bit of an advertising war over the years?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Feb 2026 ==

Also always loved this one

Absolute class.
Thank you.

 

[stadler]

Loco Toledo at Southern is one of the most memorable ones from my area. He was used from the early 2010s to the mid 2010s. It was an odd choice of a mascot but he was funny.

View attachment Southern Advert Loco Toledo.mp4

It was basically their own equivalent of the LNER "Eleanor" muppet mascot. He was a Mexican wrestler. I always found it rather odd as i have no idea what a Mexican wrestler has to do with British trains or how they came up with this idea. But it was a funny mascot. Southern did lots of radio adverts and TV adverts with him.















He was all over their website and stations posters from the early 2010s to mid 2010s and they even had some radio adverts with him. He was also on the posters above the doors in the carriages of all 377s and it took them until 2019 to fully get rid of him there. But the main point when they stopped using him as their mascot was when the DOO dispute began. I guess they thought it was probably not a good idea to have a mascot when they were so unpopular.

SOUTHERN RAILWAYS - Award winning campaign that's just Loco! — KEN TAYLOR

kentaylor.squarespace.com

In addition to the radio adverts and TV adverts i also remember that a lot of towns in Sussex and around the Southern network used to have the Loco Toledo billboards alongside the road.

They also had a Loco Toledo theme song on their website that you could download. I remember some of the lyrics were - "oh i love the train, and wrestling" / "next i go to London for Mexican place to eat, go shopping for cookery books to put upon my feet" / "next i go to Milton Keynes, they have an indoor slope, but i not very good at skiing, for me there is no hope" / "next i go to Guildford, they posher than a king, they have a big cathedral, with bells they like to ring" - it was a hilariously cringe song. Also it mentioned Guildford which i always found funny with just four Southern trains per day.

Southern also had this older TV advert in the late 2000s before Loco Toledo was introduced in which they even created their own music for the advert.

View attachment Southern Trains 08 15 To Croydon.mp4

Funnily the song says "the 08:15 to Croydon" but yet he is boarding a Brighton to Ashford service at Lewes station to go miles away from the Croydon area. Also using somewhere like Croydon in an advert song seemed rather odd. Why not use London instead which is a popular commuting destination.

 

[Milo's Trains]

On the GWR advert I have noticed what looks to be a GWR class 350? I'm guessing this is supposed to be the Heathrow Connect trains, or a class 387, however it doesn't much look like a 387.
GWR | Famous 5 Adventure TV advert

 

[SwindonManor]

View attachment 198085
On the GWR advert I have noticed what looks to be a GWR class 350? I'm guessing this is supposed to be the Heathrow Connect trains, or a class 387, however it doesn't much look like a 387.
GWR | Famous 5 Adventure TV advert

That is a 350? How odd.

 

[Russel]

One of my favourites from Virgin, I was given a behind the scenes DVD showing how it was made, they dressed a Voyager up to look like a Pendolino, which if you pause the video at about 53 seconds and look at the bodywork around the doors, becomes quite obvious.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I have seen a post literally a few moments ago - about LNER's advert, and it made me wonder. What is (in your opinion) your favourite advert from TOCs? Mine personally is "Turbo" the Avanti turtle (these can be past or present!)

I really dislike the entire Avanti branding package. It's such a missed opportunity to play on an Italian theme - even the colours are close to matching (green, red and white, though the red is more of an orange and the green more of a dark turquoise) but nothing is ever made of it. It's just mediocre lack of effort throughout - though I do like the seats!

The GWR one on the other hand - I love it from start to finish, and the Famous Five TV ads are no exception. I'll miss it when everything is boringly incorporated into GBR.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It was basically their own equivalent of the LNER "Eleanor" muppet mascot. He was a Mexican wrestler. I always found it rather odd as i have no idea what a Mexican wrestler has to do with British trains or how they came up with this idea. But it was a funny mascot. Southern did lots of radio adverts and TV adverts with him.

It's a play on two meanings of "going loco" i.e. going a bit mad with where you go and locomotive, isn't it?

 

[Russel]

I really dislike the entire Avanti branding package. It's such a missed opportunity to play on an Italian theme - even the colours are close to matching (green, red and white, though the red is more of an orange and the green more of a dark turquoise) but nothing is ever made of it. It's just mediocre lack of effort throughout - though I do like the seats!

I don't think branding or adverting is one of Avanti's strengths...

Avanti are still running ads on YouTube featuring distant shots of semi branded Voyagers passing Conwy Castle with no voiceover or background music, it's a good job the Avanti logo appears towards the end of the ad, otherwise it would just be a nice 30 second clip of a train passing a castle.

 

[Andyh82]

I really dislike the entire Avanti branding package. It's such a missed opportunity to play on an Italian theme - even the colours are close to matching (green, red and white, though the red is more of an orange and the green more of a dark turquoise) but nothing is ever made of it. It's just mediocre lack of effort throughout - though I do like the seats!

The GWR one on the other hand - I love it from start to finish, and the Famous Five TV ads are no exception. I'll miss it when everything is boringly incorporated into GBR.

I do wonder how that will work as currently the TOCs all advertise from a different angle. Focusing on long distance leisure journeys or commuting, showing off countryside on parts of their route etc etc

A London commuter TOC won’t advertise the same way as GWR or LNER do. Northern, Transpennine Express and LNER advertise with great regularity on ITV Yorkshire and all their campaigns are completely different. Under GBR presumably it’ll have to be very generalised and vague.

 

[ainsworth74]

British Rail - Britain's Railway (the 'Concerto' advert of 1988)

Yeah I reckon we have yet to top this to be fair. There's been some good ones (many of those linked above) but I think that this one remains the pinnacle. Though I've always found it bittersweet at the same time. In some respects by the late 1980s BR was at the peak of its powers (though clearly not perfect!!!) and a few years later would be dismembered unceremoniously. However, we've discussed that subject endlessly so I'll just re-watch it and the enjoy the ad rather than wang on about anything else

 

[SwindonManor]

Yeah I reckon we have yet to top this to be fair. There's been some good ones (many of those linked above) but I think that this one remains the pinnacle. Though I've always found it bittersweet at the same time. In some respects by the late 1980s BR was at the peak of its powers (though clearly not perfect!!!) and a few years later would be dismembered unceremoniously. However, we've discussed that subject endlessly so I'll just re-watch it and the enjoy the ad rather than wang on about anything else

HST and a police 37 advert was good

 

[stadler]

Another one is the Birmingham Trams (West Midlands Metro) which have Wes and Mindy who are muppets like the Eleanor adverts that LNER have.

View attachment Introducing Wes & Mindy.mp4

They have been using these Wes and Mindy muppets adverts a lot recently to promote the new tram line extension that just opened.









View attachment Introducing Wes & Mindy.mp4



I wonder whether the same advertising agency was behind the creation of both the Wes and Mindy adverts and the Eleanor adverts.

 

[47403]

Also always loved this one

That young lady in the bikini hanging out the door of the HST, was at the time, my Uncles girlfriend Julia.

 

[SwindonManor]

I really dislike the entire Avanti branding package. It's such a missed opportunity to play on an Italian theme - even the colours are close to matching (green, red and white, though the red is more of an orange and the green more of a dark turquoise) but nothing is ever made of it. It's just mediocre lack of effort throughout - though I do like the seats!

The GWR one on the other hand - I love it from start to finish, and the Famous Five TV ads are no exception. I'll miss it when everything is boringly incorporated into GBR.

Whereas I am watching intently as the turtle bursts onto the screen...they were doing a competition at one point for a turbo soft toy. GWR adverts are good, however unfortunately my guess is we'll likely see more "on the train, you can" adverts. Maybe a new batch of adverts will be released but who knows. I know I'm happy to have seen a 730 in the branding of GBR recently though...