The Critic

SHUNTING YARD OF SHAME

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Jonathan Glancey (The Critic July 2021) rightly commends FirstGroup’s GWR for a sober and sensible livery in contrast to many of the privatised railways operators who appear to have taken their design inspiratio­n from “sports shoes or the packaging of sweets.”

Some of the operators, such as Virgin and Stagecoach, already had colour schemes for their other operations (planes; fizzy drinks; buses) which they — with minimal adaptation — inflicted on their trains in a misguided exercise in brand alignment. It was like forcing a young son to wear pink because that’s what his elder sister is already kitted out in.

But closest to the buffers in the shunting yard of shame should surely be Connex, which operated the Southeaste­rn (and South Central) franchise between 1996 and 2003. Perhaps the design brief called for something cheery to brighten travellers on their early morning commute. How else to explain the white and yellow livery which made the carriages resemble fried eggs on wheels?

Beyond a desire to avoid associatio­n with so brash a colour, there is a good reason why few car owners opt for yellow: they don’t want to spend every evening with their hands in a bucket of soap and water wiping away every spot of dirt that yellow shows up.

Did nobody in Connex’s commission­ing process foresee that yellow livery would prove no less inconvenie­nt on train carriages? Far from a cheery commute to work on a mobile egg, travelling by Connex was an invitation to journey in a mud cart.

Whilst commending British Railways in 1948 for initially choosing black livery instead of “the railway equivalent of children’s pyjamas,” Glancey thinks black would not be right for today’s eel-shaped trains. Perhaps so, although Grand Central, with its American art deco inspired livery, suggests that black can still elegantly drape modern forms. The dark blue of the East Coast mainline’s first post-privatisat­ion operator, GNER, also showed that sober hues naturally command more respect.

With the national railway infrastruc­ture again to be unified by a state entity, Great British Railways, from 2023, the question is whether a serious, profession­al design that combines a nod to locomotive heritage with modern chic can win through at the expense of “creatives” who think the purpose of corporate branding is to cheer up children, or to take the Great British design brief so literally that it will just be three parallel lines of red, white and blue? Peter Swinton

London

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