FREIGHT FRAGMENTATION
Broken up into six separate entities, Railfreight locomotives were united in their grey livery but distinguished by striking logos to denote their particular field of haulage. GEORGE DENT explains.
British Rail entered the 1980s as one, gigantic and cumbersome whole. It couldn’t continue as such and was divided into sectors early in the decade. Railfreight was the stand-out sector - literally - as it shunned blue as a livery and applied a version of ‘Large Logo’ to its fleet, but swapped the blue for red. This was made even more eye-catching a year or so later with the addition of a red solebar stripe. Railfreight lasted as a single sector from 1982 until 1987, when it was split into even smaller organisations, based on the traffic carried. Trainload Freight would deal with items moved in block trains, such as coal, oils and fuels and stone and minerals. There were four Trainload Freight sectors: Coal, Construction, Metals and Petroleum. Railfreight Distribution (RFD was the sector for intermodal work, automotive and the remains of BR’S wagonload freight operations. This was known as Speedlink and its long-term future wasn’t rosy, although one glow on the horizon was the opportunity that carrying freight through the Channel Tunnel would bring. The final sector was General, which was the sectorisation version of a miscellaneous file! BR commissioned Roundel Design Group to design a new livery and the result was very striking. The two-tone grey was simple and a great canvas for the new logos, which were not only stylised interpretations of the traffic in which each sector specialised, but also had an ‘F’ in the top left corner. The livery and logos were complemented by BR double-arrow plates and depot allocation plaques, also designed by Roundel Design Group. Privatisation put an end to the Railfreight sectors in 1993. Three new ‘shadow’ franchises were formed (Mainline, Transrail and Loadhaul), while the intermodal side of Railfreight Distribution became Freightliner. RFD was the last sector to survive and became a separate ‘shadow franchise’. It retained its ‘diamond’ logos but, from 1992, locomotives gained a new dark grey upper bodyside, light grey lower bodyside and dark blue roof. It also incorporated ‘Railfreight Distribution’ lettering, and this scheme survived until it was taken over by English Welsh & Scottish Railway in 1997.