Keeping train brands on track

Thursday 27th March 2025

The latest issue of Passenger Transport fortnightly magazine is leading on a story originally covered in The Times newspaper that “Ministers saw how Greater Manchester’s Bee Network rebrand changed public perceptions almost overnight – and want the same bounce for rail”.

It goes on to report “the government is set to unveil a new Great British Railways logo in May. The rebranding aims to restore pride in Britain’s railways, with the Union Flag expected to feature prominently” adding “officials are currently finalising the new GBR branding, which will gradually replace the names and logos of existing private operators as services are brought back under public control.”

This means it’ll be farewell to South Western Railway, c2c and Greater Anglia as their current contracts expire over the next few months with those companies and staff transferring to the Government controlled DfT Operator Ltd (previously known as DfT Operator of Last Resort Holdings Ltd).

I think it’ll be a big mistake to sweep away many of the train company identities and brands we’ve become familiar with over the last few years, especially those which succinctly convey the area of the country served by the trains.

LNER, Southeastern, Northern and TransPennine Express have been under Government control for some time but the individual companies still exist, employing the staff running the service and act as the all important interface with the passenger.

It’s said the aforementioned seven companies, and in due course all the other Train Operating Companies, will later become part of Great British Railways. But does that imply doing away with the individual company structures? And if so, why?

In National Bus Company (NBC) and Scottish Bus Group days each individual bus company continued to exist, run by a management team, employing staff and negotiating localised operating arrangements with trade unions albeit within a national structure of agreements which included basic pay rates and conditions.

Bus passengers identified with long standing localised company branding until this was outlawed in the early 1970s by NBC in favour of a nationally applied livery style using either uninspiring red or green colours. This was regarded as a retrograde step which lost much public goodwill particularly as buses very much serve a local market and a national livery is irrelevant, a lesson Arriva, First Bus and Stagecoach still haven’t learnt even now.

The Train Operating Company brand names and liveries we’ve come to know (and love or hate) don’t have such a long heritage as a lot of those original bus company liveries but my view is many of them will be missed by passengers if they’re ditched in favour of a nationwide ‘one size fits all’ Great British Railways branding and livery.

Because one size doesn’t fit all.

Even in British Rail days a single nationwide branding wasn’t around for long as managers realised the power of using separate identities for InterCity and Network SouthEast for example.

During the privatisation years many brands have come and gone as franchises have been reorganised – Thames Trains being a good example of local trains ‘doing what it says on the tin’ before it was subsumed into First Great Western, which became GWR.

The East Coast main line has seen a number of brands but LNER, as well as the original GNER, have proved what a strong brand can deliver not least on a line that now sees three open access operators (Grand Central, Hull Trains and Lumo) which will continue with their individual identities and will become even stronger if all other trains are branded the same.

I would like to see the strongest brands which resonant with a particular market segment retained under an overarching GBR branding.

Perhaps the model adopted by the Go-Ahead Group for its bus companies would work best; ie use strong local branding for each bus company outside of London, but with a subtle ‘Part of Go-Ahead’ tagline underneath.

I’d keep the GWR, EMR and LNER names and come up with a snappier brand for the West Coast main line – perhaps just ‘West Coast’ and ditch ‘Avanti’.

I’d also retain the Cross Country brand to denote the main links between the south west and south with the north west and north east/Scotland, which after all “cross” the “country”. I’d also retain it for the Stansted Airport/Birmingham and Nottingham/Cardiff runs. And of course, Cross Country are just starting to roll out a brand new branding for its Turbostar fleet with the first train recently completed. If the brand is about to be swept away, why on earth is this expense being approved by the DfT?

I think Southeastern, Southern, Thameslink, SWR and Chiltern are strong brands for south east commuters and should continue along with the resurrection of Thames Trains as a brand and something new that’s more appropriate for trains in Essex than c2c.

Thameslink very much “does what it says on the tin” as a brand and, of course, denotes cheaper fares for commuters than those using Southern. If Thameslink were lost, you can bet it’ll mean those reduced fares being withdrawn – which won’t endear any new Great British Railways brand to Sussex commuters.

Stansted Express could usefully retain its brand but not Gatwick Express which is effectively Southern these days anyway. The deeply unpopular and confusing rip-off premium fares on Gatwick Express can finally be dispensed with too.

Greater Anglia has really made its mark under Transport UK with its fleet wide investment in new trains and has rightly won a number of awards. The company has built up considerable goodwill and it would be foolish to ditch this in favour of a nationwide bland brand which has all the vibes of politicians merely wanting their egos stroked.

As for Northern and TransPennine Express I’d merge them into something like ‘Transport for the North’ (TfN) so as to make a powerful statement about railways in the north, which everyone keeps going on about – and, after all, both companies have already been in public ownership for quite some time (five years for Northern and two years for TransPennine Express).

It goes without saying ScotRail and Transport for Wales will retain their individual identities and of course so will Caledonian Sleeper, London Overground and Merseyrail with West Midlands Railway already having developed an identity which links trains with buses and trams in that Combined Authority.

With Mayoral aspirations in Greater Manchester for local control it makes sense for those routes and local trains within the area to receive Bee Network branding so they appear “integrated” with the buses and trams.

I can see similar Mayoral desires in West and South Yorkshire which will turn the clock back to when those PTEs had influence and some trains appeared in a localised livery with appropriate logos.

One other brand, Great Northern, probably needs splitting with the Moorgate lines handed over to the London Mayor as part of an expanded London Overground (and introducing more individual line names) together with Dartford loop services on Southeastern and possibly the Hayes branch. The rest of Great Northern (including Kings Lynn) could be branded as Greater Anglia while it Hertford East line could be London Overground.

Maybe the Euston to Tring shorts and the St Albans Abbey line run by London Northwestern could also be part of an expanded London Overground with the rest of LNWR becoming ‘West Coast’?

Just to complete the picture, both Elizabeth Line and Heathrow Express would stay unchanged and the new East-West Rail due to start later this year (Oxford – Bletchley/Milton Keynes and later subsuming the Bletchley/Bedford branch and on to Cambridge) should be branded as exactly that, East-West Rail, and not GBR (or the operator, Chiltern Railway). I don’t know if it’s the intention to brand it as East-West or whether it’ll be the very first GBR branded operation when it starts up. That will be interesting to see.

The aforementioned ideas on branding don’t necessarily need to fall in line with company structures which could remain unchanged aside from obvious merging of back office functions and doing away with all the hundreds of people deployed on delay attribution etc. The thought of moving all staff into one huge GBR company with the multitude of complex trade union agreements and restrictive practices would be a nightmare. I understand there are still legacy issues with different working practices within Northern and various parts of West Midlands Trains following previous mergers and reorganisations of past franchisees.

I realise a significant objective of creating GBR is to bring track and train back together and the foregoing would do nothing to integrate Network Rail staff into the train operating environments. But British Rail was able to reorganise itself into sectors, most notably Network South East, in the 1980s and Scotrail has been run as one integrated railway for some time with its managing director responsible for train operating staff as well as Network Rail staff. If the objective is to have common management across other areas, there’s no reason why an appropriate structure can’t be established.

And keeping different brand names doesn’t mean ticket simplification can’t happen. Inter availability of tickets across whatever brands are used should be the norm albeit with open access operators obviously wanting to retain their independence. The GBR brand can do the heavy lifting on communicating integration of ticketing.

Right, I’ll put my colouring crayons away now and look forward to reading readers’ views.

Roger French

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