Railway Liveries - Some good, some not so

To a rail enthusiast like me this is an important matter, to everyone else maybe not, but here goes anyway.

A Class 777 EMU in Merseyrail livery

 

On balance I don’t like the Merseyrail livery on their new(ish) and sadly rather unreliable Class 777 EMU’s. I feel that an opportunity was lost and at little extra cost batches of these new trains could have been vinyl wrapped in the various previous iterations of former BR and Mersey Railway trains of the now Merseyrail Network. Having them all look the same, well, it’s boring and unimaginative.

The draft GBR livery

 

So, what about the proposed Great British Railways draft livery? Well, it seems to have gone down badly. Yes, it’s striking but is it a good livery? Probably not. It’s clearly based on a stylised Union flag, although whether that’s intended to be a nationalistic nod to the current fashion of roundabout painting is not clear.

Apart from British Airways using a different 1980’s stylised version of the Union flag on their planes, much to the disgust of former PM Thatcher (who famously covered up a BA model plane tail fin with her handkerchief) I’d say that jingoist liveries are actually rather un-British.

If I had to point to a rail liveries I do like then Trans Pennine Express, LNER and ScotRail come to mind:-

Trans Pennine Express at Berwick-on-Tweed

 

ScotRail & LNER together at Edinburgh Waverley

 

As I said at the start of this ramble through modern-day railway liveries this subject may be what amounts to a nerdy matter to many folk who just want our rather unreliable railways to run on time without the oh so expected cancellations. I too want reliable trains but I want them to look well too. 

With regard to Merseyrail there was a clear opportunity to celebrate the railways and their liveries that came before the present Merseyrail Class 777's so, as a heritage inclined person, I really do point to a missed opportunity.