British Rail - British Rail Branding - D

British Rail - D

British Rail Branding

British Rail Pre-1960s

Following nationalisation in 1948, British Railways began to adapt the corporate liveries on the rolling stock it had inherited from its predecessor railway companies. Initially, an express blue (followed by GWR-style Brunswick green in 1952) was used on passenger locomotives, and LNWR-style lined black for mixed-traffic locomotives, but later green was more widely adopted.

Development of a corporate identity for the organisation was hampered by the competing ambitions of the British Transport Commission and the Railway Executive. The Executive attempted to introduce a modern Art Deco-style curved logo, which could also serve as the standard for station signage totems. BR eventually adopted the common branding of the BTC as its first corporate logo, a lion astride a spoked wheel, designed for the BTC by Cecil Thomas, on the bar overlaid across the wheel, the BTC's name was replaced with the words "British Railways".

This logo, nicknamed the "Cycling Lion", was applied from 1948 to 1956 to the sides of locomotives, while the oval style was adopted for station signs across Great Britain, each coloured according to the appropriate BR region, using the Gill Sans font first adopted by LNER in 1923.

In 1956, the BTC was granted a heraldic achievement by the College of Arms and the Lord Lyon, and then BTC chairman Brian Robertson wanted a grander logo for the railways. BR's second corporate logo (1956–1965), designed in consultation with Charles Franklyn, adapted the original, depicting a rampant lion emerging from a heraldic crown and holding a spoked wheel, all enclosed in a roundel with the "British Railways" name displayed across a bar on either side. This emblem soon acquired the nickname of the "Ferret and Dartboard". A variant of the logo with the name in a circle was also used on locomotives.

The zeal for modernisation in the Beeching era drove the next rebranding exercise, and BR management wished to divest the organisation of anachronistic, heraldic motifs and develop a corporate identity to rival that of London Transport. BR's design panel set up a working party led by Milner Gray of the Design Research Unit. They drew up a Corporate Identity Manual which established a coherent brand and design standard for the whole organisation, specifying Rail Blue and pearl grey as the standard colour scheme for all rolling stock.

Rail Alphabet as the standard corporate typeface, designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, and introducing the now-iconic corporate Identity Symbol of the Double Arrow logo. Designed by Gerald Barney (also of the DRU), this arrow device was formed of two interlocked arrows across two parallel lines, symbolising a double-track railway. It was likened to a bolt of lightning or barbed wire, and also acquired a nickname: "the arrow of indecision".

A mirror image of the double arrow was used on the port side of BR-owned Sealink ferry funnels. The new BR corporate identity and Double Arrow were rolled out in 1965, and the brand name of the organisation was truncated to "British Rail". It is now employed as a generic symbol on street signs in Great Britain denoting railway stations, and is still printed on railway tickets as part of the Rail Delivery Group's jointly managed National Rail brand.

British Rail Post-1960s

The uniformity of BR branding continued until the process of sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s. Certain BR operations such as Inter-City, Network SouthEast, Regional Railways or Rail Express Systems began to adopt their own identities, introducing logos and colour schemes which were essentially variants of the British Rail brand.

Eventually, as sectorisation developed into a prelude to privatisation, the unified British Rail brand disappeared, with the notable exception of the Double Arrow symbol, which has survived to this day and serves as a generic trademark to denote railway services across Great Britain. The BR Corporate Identity Manual is noted as a piece of British design history and there are plans for it to be re-published.

British Rail Overview

British Rail Type: State-owned enterprise

British Rail Industry: Railway transport, logistics, shipping, and manufacturing of rolling stock

British Rail Predecessor:

Great Western Railway

London, Midland & Scottish Railway

London & North Eastern Railway

Southern Railway

British Rail Founded: 1 January 1948

British Rail Defunct: 20 November 1997

British Rail Fate: Privatised

British Rail Successor:

National Rail

Train Operating Franchises:

Railtrack

EWS

Freightliner

British Rail Headquarters: London, England

British Rail Area Served: Great Britain

British Rail Key People: Alastair Morton

(Final Chairman of the British Railways Board)

British Rail Products: Rail transport, cargo transport, services

British Rail Owner: Government of the United Kingdom

British Rail Parent:

1948–1962:

British Transport Commission

1962–1997:

British Railways Board

British Rail Divisions:

From 1948:

Eastern Region

London Midland Region

North Eastern Region

Scottish Region

Southern Region

Western Region

British Rail Research Division

Collection & Delivery

Freightliner

Motorail

Night Star Parcels

Speedlink

Rail Express Parcels

Red Star Parcels

From 1982:

InterCity

Network SouthEast

Railfreight

Railfreight Distribution

Rail Express Systems

Regional Railways

Trainload Freight

British Rail Subsidiaries:

British Rail Engineering Ltd

British Transport Hotels

European Passenger Services

Sealink

Seaspeed

Travellers Fare

Rail Holidays
Rail Vacations

Luxury Trains
Luxury Tours

International Trains
International Tours