Will the two-letter codes/reporting marks for train operating companies change under GBR?

[RUK]

I’ve never understood why from the time of National Express East Anglia onwards it was LE - I suppose under GBR, LE and CC for c2c (which I guess must have been different under LTS Rail days, before Prism Rail was acquired by National Express) could be combined to form AN for Anglia? LNER could change from GR for GNER to EC, which East Coast never got before. And Avanti could finally change from VT to something like WC, too. But TfW Rail, which will be out-side of GBR, still hasn’t changed from AW for Arriva Trains Wales.

 

[Bletchleyite]

LE was London Eastern Railway which was the original "generic" name for that TOC.

I believe it's hard coded in too many systems to be worth changing it at present, hence why for example Avanti West Coast is still VT and Transport for Wales is still AW, and both WMR and LNR are still LM (which made it a faff to get the CIS displays saying the right thing for each and not the confusing "West Midlands Trains" which isn't used for customer facing publicity).

I have seen WCxxxx on the displays on the side of a Pendolino so they can clearly do that but I only saw it once. No doubt a bored guard having a play to see what it would do.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Old BR, being a monopoly, didn't need a system for identifying different operators, but GBR will have to distinguish the non-GBR services (ie OA, concessions or Scotrail/TfW).
Once they have made their mind up about Regions they can decide whether/how to identify their services.

I can still remember BR announcements of the form "This train was delayed on the Western Region" (at Crewe), and "This train was delayed on the London Midland Region" (at Reading). The blame game.

 

[SynthD]

No, let the names and codes drift apart, the codes aren’t even customer facing.

 

[D6130]

No, let the names and codes drift apart, the codes aren’t even customer facing.

They are in the few remaining printed timetables....such as the one for North-West England produced by Northern. Also, are they not shown on the A-Z departure sheets displayed at quite a few stations?

 

[Egg Centric]

I don't see any massive reason to. To draw an airline analogy, Speedbird has nothing to do with British Airways, it was inherited. Or if we're talking just about codes LS has nothing to do with Jet2 as presently constituted such, another inheritance.

If anything as in the above examples it's a fun piece of history to carry over the older codes.

 

[TheWierdOne]

I don't see any massive reason to. To draw an airline analogy, Speedbird has nothing to do with British Airways, it was inherited. Or if we're talking just about codes LS has nothing to do with Jet2 as presently constituted such, another inheritance.

If anything as in the above examples it's a fun piece of history to carry over the older codes.

Personally I think we should take a leaf out of British Airway’s book and assign each region or service category a different callsign to prefix their head code with.

Tilting services up the WCML could be Wobblers, Scotrail services could be Bravehearts, and trains between York, Leeds and London could be “Ey Up” or “Ey Down” depending on direction of travel.

 

[Russel]

LE was London Eastern Railway which was the original "generic" name for that TOC.

Cheers for this, I've often wondered what LE referred to on the Great Eastern!