British Rail Brand Names
British Rail was the brand image of the nationalised railway owner and operator in Great Britain, the British Railways Board, used from 1965 until its breakup and sell-off from 1993 onwards.
From an initial standardised corporate image, several sub-brands emerged for marketing purposes, and later in preparation for privatisation. These brands covered rail networks, customers services, and several classes of new trains.
With the size of British Rail's fleet, due to the time required to repaint rolling stock, in terms of the physical trains brand switchovers could be lengthy affairs lasting years. This worsened into privatisation, with the same services often using 3 or 4 different liveries.
Following privatisation, several of the brands disappeared, although some such as ScotRail, Merseyrail, Eurostar and Freightliner remain. Some privatised train operating companies have since introduced their own brands along the same lines, such as, Midland Mainline's "Meridian" trains, and the Virgin Trains "Voyager" services).
The iconic double-arrow symbol introduced with the creation of the British Rail brand remains post-privatisation, as a unifying branding device for the privatised National Rail network, used on most tickets, stations and publicity, but not trains.
Read more about British Rail Brand Names: Timeline of Brands
Famous quotes containing the words british, rail, brand and/or names:
“Gaze not on swans, in whose soft breast,
A full-hatched beauty seems to nest
Nor snow, which falling from the sky
Hovers in its virginity.”
—Henry Noel, British poet, and William Strode, British poet. Beauty Extolled (attributed to Noel and to Strode)
“Old man, it’s four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly any bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin rail and the wornout tread.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Oh yes, children often commit murders. And quite clever ones, too. Some murderers, particularly the distinguished ones who are going to make great names for themselves, start amazingly early.... Like mathematicians and musicians. Poets develop later.”
—John Lee Mahin (1902–1984)