In some ways, it is too late to argue about the merits of Great British Railways, because this reform is happening.

The Bill to give GBR legal powers is making its way through Parliament, while passenger operators are being progressively renationalised. When Govia Thameslink Railway is nationalised (or, as the DfT prefers to say, is ‘transferred to public ownership’) on 31 May, we will have passed the halfway point.

It is not my intention to argue at length about the merits of the former franchising system and, indeed, private versus public ownership is not the primary issue here either.

But my preference is for a railway system which is efficient, consistent and even beautiful, bearing in mind that form follows function.

When I buy a ticket from a machine at Carlisle, I would like the layout on the screen to be the same as it is in Norwich or Plymouth, so that I understand it immediately.

When I look out of the window at a station platform, I would like the station name to be obvious – displayed in the same lettering at Leeds as it is at Swindon or Brighton and unburdened by a sponsor’s board. 


Advertising has its place, and the revenue is important, but just as the Victorians went much too far by plastering their stations with ads from floor to roof, the modern railway has sometimes interfered with the flow of important information (like the name of the station) by adding the name of some wretched university or travel agent. It is a distraction, particular when the advertiser’s message is more prominent than the station name.

Similarly unforgivable is the equally wretched National Rail website, which doesn’t even sell tickets but bounces the hapless user to one operator or another when the deal has eventually been decided, while its design burdens the enquirer with far too many clicks. It can also be slow, not perhaps because of coding flaws, but because the pages are littered with tacky Google ads, many of which are animated. This is a first class misappliance of science, because the animations mop up computer resources and slow everything down. I want to catch a train, not be told about a medical remedy!

There have been times in the past when the railway has been much more consistent. The old LNER (the one that existed between 1923 and 1947) specified a single typeface for everything, and its publications and posters were much clearer as a result. The modern LNER also has a detailed corporate identity, which again is carefully applied.


The British Rail corporate identity of 1965 was hailed as a success, but its standards for print were littered with too many options, and within ten years the rules had been largely set aside by graphic designers who then did their own thing (which designers love to do). But the new identity still played a major part in making BR recognisable and part of the national family. The double arrows in particular are said to be one of the best-known logos anywhere and, very wisely, they have been retained for GBR.

London Transport and its modern successor Transport for London have also been leaders in transport graphic design, but I am becoming a little doubtful about TfL’s current attitude to advertising, although I know it is struggling to raise every penny.

TfL’s latest Business Plan refers, with misplaced enthusiasm, to ‘groundbreaking brand activations’, and ‘immersive experiences on the Tube’. Do you know, I didn’t come down the escalator for a subterranean theme park – I was hoping for a northbound Victoria line train. And was it really necessary to indulge a brand of alcohol-free beer by changing the names of some Bakerloo line stations for a couple of weeks, so that Waterloo became ‘Waterl0.0’? This was (rightly, I think) criticised by a disability rights charity, concerned that it could cause ‘unnecessary confusion’ for less able people. In fact, it could have confused anyone who was not familiar with the system.

However, advertising cannot take the blame for all railway inconsistencies.

I said I wouldn’t argue at length about franchising, and indeed you don’t need private ownership to confuse the issue. When British Rail started to replace its Regions with business sectors from 1982, the effect was to create not one but three passenger operators. InterCity, for example, later ceased to advertise some trains running beyond Plymouth in its timetables. Those trains were using Regional Railways infrastructure in Cornwall, where they would apparently pass into the outer darkness.

Only Network SouthEast, set up in 1986, believed that running-in boards at busier stations should include the word ‘welcome’. This meant that passengers arriving at Exeter Central (an NSE station) were welcomed in so many words, but those down the road at Exeter St Davids (InterCity) were not. A trivial detail, admittedly, but it played its part in increasing inconsistency.

The boulder really did smash through the plate glass window on the peculiarly apt date of 1 April 1994, when the three passenger sectors exploded into 25 ‘train operating units’ in preparation for privatisation. The nation now had 25 different railways, and the confusion could only worsen after the last private sector franchise had been launched in March 1997.

Critics often complained about the vast costs of employing hordes of lawyers and accountants to make privatisation happen (a single station access agreement could be the size of the old London telephone directory), but the graphic designers did not do so badly either.

Certainly they had plenty of work to do. Logos and identities were devised and then scrapped in favour of another version (North Western Trains – later First North Western – had three logos in less than two years).

The rapid changes made it almost impossible to keep up. Station nameboards became disfigured by rectangles of white vinyl concealing former franchise names, while others showed the names of two operators, leaving passengers to work out which one might be running the trains today.

This palace of varieties has continued into modern times, made worse by a labyrinth of fares which is beyond most people’s understanding (including mine).

Another source of misunderstanding must be inconsistent station names. You would think that each station has one name, but it depends where you look. There are two stations at Farnborough, one of which is Farnborough North. The former franchisee Stagecoach changed the signs at the other, busier, station to read ‘Farnborough’, without qualification, but if you look at the National Rail station index it is Farnborough (Main), and because that long-established name is in the station index it is also on the ticketing database. As it happens, Farnborough Air Show attracts many foreign visitors, and have any been deluded into going past their stop because they are waiting to arrive at a station called Farnborough (Main)?

A similar clash occurs at Edinburgh Waverley (LNER, Network Rail) and Edinburgh (National Rail). This kind of thing is a relic of British Rail, which tried to simplify station names so that the main station in the town would have no suffix.

Unfortunately, BR did not have the courage of its convictions, and did not dare to tample with hallowed names like Bristol Temple Meads.

Edinburgh Waverley strictly needed no distinction after Edinburgh Princes Street had closed, although other Edinburghs have been opened in more recent times, and as the signs say Edinburgh Waverley (as does LNER in its timetables) could National Rail bear to follow suit? (ScotRail does not know what it thinks. It shows the station as Edinburgh in its timetables but as Edinburgh Waverley on its maps.)

I also said that I was not primarily arguing here about private versus public ownership. It would have been possible for private operators to have been awarded concessions by GBR, and this was the original plan as proposed by Keith Williams, but the presence of private operators does not necessarily mean inconsistency.

 
Systems like the Docklands Light Railway, London Overground and the Elizabeth line are run for Transport for London by private companies who have been awarded concessions, but their public faces are that of TfL. This includes fares and timetables, as well as graphic design. GBR could have been set up in the same way, but instead the government has decided to more or less eliminate the private sector from running the passenger railway with the exception of open access operators – but they are another story.

So what I would like from our nationalised Great British Railways is a genuinely unified railway. Where the fares are easy to understand, where design standards are consistent on trains, platforms, uniforms, printed publicity and websites, making the system easier to use, and where advertising is kept under control.

The transport secretary has said that GBR will not be British Rail Mk2, but that is, perhaps, too broad a statement. GBR (and its customers) will benefit from adopting those aspects of the railway that British Rail got right.

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