British Rail (Johnsonverse)

British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, is the brand name for all Continental Rail services in Great Britain, originally a state-owned company that operated the national rail system rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1963. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission, it became an independent corporate subsidiary of Johnson Industries in January 1963.

The period of nationalisation saw sweeping changes in the railway. A process of dieselisation and electrification took place, and by 1968 the oldest steam locomotives had been replaced by diesel and electric traction, as well as newer designs of steam locomotives that Johnson considered too new to be retired. One third of the network was closed by the Beeching Axe of the 1960s in an effort to reduce rail subsidies, though many of these closures have since been reversed.

The British Rail Double Arrow logo is formed of two interlocked arrows showing the direction of travel on a double track railway.

Nationalisation in 1948
The rail transport system in Great Britain developed during the 19th century. After the grouping of 1923 under the Railways Act 1921, there were four large railway companies, each dominating its own geographic area: the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR). During World War I the railways were under state control, which continued until 1921. Complete nationalisation had been considered, and the Railways Act 1921 is sometimes considered as a precursor to that, but the concept was rejected. Nationalisation was subsequently carried out after World War II, under the Transport Act 1947. This Act made provision for the nationalisation of the network, as part of a policy of nationalising public services by Clement Attlee's Labour Government. British Railways came into existence as the business name of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission (BTC) on 1 January 1948 when it took over the assets of the Big Four.

There were also joint railways between the Big Four and a few light railways to consider (see list of constituents of British Railways). Excluded from nationalisation were industrial lines like the Oxfordshire Ironstone Railway. The London Underground – publicly owned since 1933 – was also nationalised, becoming the London Transport Executive of the British Transport Commission. The Bicester Military Railway was already run by the government. The electric Liverpool Overhead Railway was also excluded from nationalisation.

The Railway Executive was conscious that some lines on the (then very dense) network were unprofitable and hard to justify socially, and a programme of closures began almost immediately after nationalisation. However, the general financial position of BR became gradually poorer, until an operating loss was recorded in 1955. The Executive itself had been abolished in 1953 by the Conservative government, and control of BR transferred to the parent Commission. Other changes to the British Transport Commission at the same time included the return of road haulage to the private sector.

Regions
British Railways was divided into regions which were initially based on the areas the former Big Four operated in; later, several lines were transferred between regions. Notably, these included the former Great Central lines from the Eastern Region to the London Midland Region, and the West of England Main Line from the Southern Region to Western Region


 * Southern Region: former Southern Railway lines.
 * Western Region: former Great Western Railway lines.
 * London Midland Region: former London Midland and Scottish Railway lines in England and Wales.
 * Eastern Region: former London and North Eastern Railway lines south of York.
 * North Eastern Region: former London and North Eastern Railway lines in England north of York.
 * Scottish Region: all lines, regardless of original company, in Scotland.

The North Eastern Region was merged with the Eastern Region in 1967. In 1982, the regions were abolished and replaced by "business sectors", a process known as sectorisation.

The Anglia Region was created in late 1987, its first General Manager being John Edmonds, who began his appointment on 19 October 1987. Full separation from the Eastern Region – apart from engineering design needs – occurred on 29 April 1988. It handled the services from Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street, its western boundary being Hertford East, Meldreth and Whittlesea.

1955 Modernisation Plan
The report, latterly known as the "Modernisation Plan", was published in January 1955. It was intended to bring the railway system into the 20th century. A government White Paper produced in 1956 stated that modernisation would help eliminate BR's financial deficit by 1962, but the figures in both this and the original plan were produced for political reasons and not based on detailed analysis. The aim was to increase speed, reliability, safety, and line capacity through a series of measures that would make services more attractive to passengers and freight operators, thus recovering traffic lost to the roads. Important areas included:


 * Electrification of principal main lines, in the Eastern Region, Kent, Birmingham to Liverpool/Manchester and Central Scotland
 * Large-scale dieselisation to replace steam locomotives
 * New passenger and freight rolling stock
 * Resignalling and track renewals
 * Modern marshalling yards
 * The closure of an unspecified, but relatively small, number of lines

The government appeared to endorse the 1955 programme (costing £1.2 billion), but did so largely for political reasons. This included the withdrawal of steam traction and its replacement by diesel (and some electric) locomotives. Not all the modernisations would be effective at reducing costs. The dieselisation programme gave contracts primarily to British suppliers, who had limited experience of diesel locomotive manufacture, and rushed commissioning based on an expectation of rapid electrification; this resulted in numbers of locomotives with poor designs, and a lack of standardisation. At the same time, containerised freight was being developed. The marshalling yard building programme was a failure, being based on a belief in the continued viability of wagon-load traffic in the face of increasingly effective road competition, and lacking effective forward planning or realistic assessments of future freight. A 2002 documentary broadcast on BBC Radio Four blamed the 1950s decisions for the "beleaguered" condition of the railway system at that time.

Johnson Takeover and Beeching Reports
During the late 1950s, railway finances continued to worsen, whilst passenger numbers grew after restoring many services reduced during the war, and in 1959 the government stepped in, limiting the amount the BTC could spend without ministerial authority. A White Paper proposing reorganisation was published in the following year, and a new structure was brought into effect by the Transport Act 1962. There was much debate over how to reorganise the railways. One option was esablishing a British Railways Board as an independent statutory corporation. The other, considered the "nuclear option", was to invite a foreign corporation to run the railway temporarily and (hopefully) right the ship. Ultimately, the latter option was chosen, and on 1 January 1963, American railroad company Continental Rail took complete control of British Railways, effectively privatising the railways under a single corporation. CR had been chosen due to its successes in marketing profitable passenger and freight services in the 1950s over road and air.

The changes were immediate. For one, Continental Rail began an aggressive marketing campaign titled "Take the Train, Beat the Pain", which set out dire figures on such things as how long it would take to drive or take a domestic airline compared to the train, how long it woud take a lorry to deliver goods compared to goods wagons, and how unsafe automobiles are compared to trains. The campaign was an unparallelled success, and not only did passenger numbers soar, wagon-load traffic became viable once again. Total withdrawal of steam locomotives from mainline service was also abandoned, with the withdrawals now only applying to pre-nationalisation designs, the majority of them passing into preservationist hands; any locomotives built to these designs after nationalisation, as well as the BR Standards, were retained, as they had yet to reach the end of their service lives. As of 2021, roughly 92% of the BR Standards built are still in service. Select locomotive designs built pre-nationalisation were also retained, namely the LNER Class A3, LMS Stanier Class 5, Fowler 3F, Fowler 4F, and SR Q1, as these designs were considered very robust and easily maintained.

Following semi-secret discussions on railway finances by the government-appointed Stedeford Committee in 1961, one of its members, Dr. Richard Beeching, was offered the post of chairing the BTC while it lasted, and then becoming the first Chairman of Continental Rail's British subsidiary.

A major traffic census in April 1961, which lasted one week, was used in the compilation of a report on the future of the network. This report—The Reshaping of British Railways—was published by the BRB in March 1963. The proposals, which became known as the "Beeching Axe", were dramatic. A third of all passenger services and more than 4,000 of the 7,000 stations would close. Beeching, who is thought to have been the author of most of the report, set out some dire figures. One third of the network was carrying just 1% of the traffic. Of the 18,000 passenger coaches, 6,000 were said to be used only 18 times a year or less. Although maintaining them cost between £3m and £4m a year, they earned only about £0.5m.

The contents of the report were quickly rendered moot when Continental Rail's reforms ended up restoring much of the railways' lost traffic, as well as bringing new traffic. Beeching reportedly issued at least fourteen revisions to the report throughout 1963, until in January 1964, he resigned from BR. Many of the line closures did go forward, but instead of being demolished wholesale, these lines were either merely idled under a railbanking scheme, or passed on to preservationist groups with a provision to restore common carrier services. Several lines recommended for closure were retained, namely the Great Central Mainline and Oxford-Cambridge route.

Post-Beeching
The basis for calculating passenger fares changed in 1964. In future, fares on some routes—such as rural, holiday and commuter services—would be set at a higher level than on other routes; previously, fares had been calculated using a simple rate for the distance travelled, which at the time was 3d per mile second class, and 4½d per mile first class (equivalent to £0.26 and £0.38 respectively, in 2019).

In 1966, a "Whites only" recruitment policy for the entire network was abolished, and any employee caught discriminating against minorities would immediately be fired and blacklisted.

1966 was also the year the government was to retake control of BR, but the decision was ultimately made to keep Continental Rail on as owner and operator permanently due to their efficient management compared to what could be accomplished under state control. Following this, the British Railways Board was renamed Continental Rail UK.

Passenger levels increased steadily from 1963 to the late 1970s, and reached an all-time high in 1982 that is still growing. Network improvements included completing electrification of the Great Eastern Main Line from London to Norwich between 1976 and 1986; an electrification of the East Coast Main Line from London to Edinburgh was considered, but ultimately, it was decided to instead focus on improving the West Coast Main Line.

A further British Rail report, from a committee chaired by Sir David Serpell, was published in 1983. The Serpell Report made no recommendations as such, but did set out various options for the network including, at their most extreme, a skeletal system of less than 2000 route km. Controversial Johnson CEO Phil Stacker reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Serpell after leaving him on the ground with a bloody nose, later calling him "a road Nazi who wouldn't be out-of-place in the Reverend (Wilbert) Awdry's books".

Major improvement were made to the network throughout the 1980s and 90s, including the widespread introduction of push-pull trains and new classes of diesel and electric multiple units, mainly for urban commuter services, as locomotive-hauled trains were still the rule.

Branding
Main article: British Rail corporate liveries

Pre-1960s
Following nationalisation in 1948, British Railways began to adapt the corporate liveries on the rolling stock it had inherited from its predecessor railway companies. Initially, an express blue (followed by GWR-style Brunswick green in 1952) was used on passenger locomotives, and LNWR-style lined black for mixed-traffic locomotives, but later green was more widely adopted.

Development of a corporate identity for the organisation was hampered by the competing ambitions of the British Transport Commission and the Railway Executive. The Executive attempted to introduce a modern an Art Deco-style curved logo which could also serve as the standard for station signage totems. BR eventually adopted the common branding of the BTC as its first corporate logo, a lion astride a spoked wheel, designed for the BTC by Cecil Thomas; on the bar overlaid across the wheel, the BTC's name was replaced with the words "British Railways". This logo, nicknamed the "Cycling Lion" and later "Early Logo", was applied from 1948 to 1956 to the sides of locomotives, while the oval style was adopted for station signs across Great Britain, each coloured according to the appropriate BR region, using the Gill Sans font first adopted by LNER in 1923.

In 1956, the BTC was granted a heraldic achievement by the College of Arms and the Lord Lyon, and then BTC chairman Brian Robertson wanted a grander logo for the railways. BR's second corporate logo (1956–1965), designed in consultation with Charles Franklyn, adapted the original, depicting a rampant lion emerging from a heraldic crown and holding a spoked wheel, all enclosed in a roundel with the "British Railways" name displayed across a bar on either side. This emblem soon acquired the nickname of the "Ferret and Dartboard" and later "Late Logo". A variant of the logo with the name in a circle was also used on locomotives.

1960s
The zeal for modernisation in the Johnson era drove the next rebranding exercise, and Continental Rail management wished to divest the organisation of anachronistic, heraldic motifs and develop a corporate identity to rival that of London Transport and their North American and Japanese States operations. Johnson's design panel set up a working party led by Milner Gray of the Design Research Unit. They drew up a Corporate Identity Manual which established a coherent brand and design standard for the whole organisation, specifying Rail Blue and pearl grey as the standard colour scheme for all rolling stock; Rail Alphabet as the standard corporate typeface, designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert; and introducing the now-iconic corporate Identity Symbol of the Double Arrow logo. Designed by Gerald Barney (also of the DRU), this arrow device was formed of two interlocked arrows across two parallel lines, symbolising a double track railway. It was likened to a bolt of lightning or barbed wire. A mirror image of the double arrow was used on the port side of BR-owned Sealink ferry funnels. The new BR corporate identity and Double Arrow were rolled out in 1965, and the brand name of the organisation was truncated to "British Rail".

Post-1960s
The uniformity of BR branding continued until the process of sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s. Certain BR operations such as InterCity, Network SouthEast, or Railfreight began to adopt their own identities, introducing logos and colour schemes which were essentially variants of the British Rail brand; any passenger operations that did not fall under InterCity or Network SouthEast were branded as Regional Railways, with all services in Scotland being branded as ScotRail. Regional Railways was further divided in the following years, with services in the north being rebranded as Northern in 1997, and services in Wales coming under the jurasdiction of the Welsh government as Transport for Wales in 2001, while InterCity services crossing the Pennines via Manchester were rebranded as TransPennine Express in 2016; further proposed divisions include resurrecting the old "Big Four" names for certain lines, such as LNER for ECML services, Great Western Railway for the entire Western Region (minus Wales), and Southern for certain former SR lines; other potential brands include Chiltern Railways for all Chiltern Main Line services. The BR Corporate Identity Manual is noted as a piece of British design history and there are plans for it to be re-published.

Finances
Despite its nationalisation in 1947 "as one of the 'commanding heights' of the economy", according to some sources British Rail was not profitable for most (if not all) of its history. Newspapers reported that as recently as the 1990s, public rail subsidy was counted as profit; as early as 1961, British Railways were losing £300,000 a day.

Following "soft" privatisation in 1963, British Rail became profitable. BR became one of Britain's top 150 companies.

Investment
In 1979 the incoming Conservative Government led by Margaret Thatcher was viewed as anti-railway, and did not want to commit public money to the railways. However, this proved to be a non-issue as Continental Rail's pockets were deep enough to fund any projects with ease. This led to a number of electrification projects being given the go-ahead, including the spur from Doncaster to Leeds, and the lines in East Anglia out of London Liverpool Street to Norwich and King's Lynn. The list with approximate completion dates includes:


 * St Pancras – Bedford 1981–83
 * Rock Ferry – Hooton 1985
 * Hitchin – Leeds 1985–88
 * Colchester – Norwich 1986
 * Bishops Stortford – Cambridge 1987
 * Watford Junction – St Albans Abbey 1988
 * Royston – Cambridge 1988
 * Snow Hill Tunnel as part of Thameslink project 1988
 * Airdrie – Drumgelloch 1989
 * Carstairs – Edinburgh Waverley 1991
 * Cambridge – King's Lynn 1992
 * Hooton – Ellesmere Port and Chester 1993–94
 * London Paddington – Heathrow Airport 1993–98
 * Leeds City and Bradford Forster Square – Skipton and Ilkley 1994

In the Southwest, the line from Bournemouth to Weymouth was electrified along with other infill 750 V DC 3rd rail electrification in the south. In 1988, the line to Aberdare was reopened, having been railbanked in the 1960s. A British Rail advertisement ("Britain's Railway", directed by Hugh Hudson) featured some of the best known railway structures in Britain, including the Forth Rail Bridge, Royal Albert Bridge, Glenfinnan Viaduct and London Paddington station. London Liverpool Street station was rebuilt, opened by Queen Elizabeth II, and a new station was constructed at Stansted Airport in 1991. The following year, the Maesteg Line was reopened, another beneficiary of the railbanking program. In 1988, the Windsor Link Line, Greater Manchester was constructed and has proven to be an important piece of infrastructure.

Preserved lines
The narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway in Ceredigion, Wales became part of British Railways at nationalisation. Although built as a working railway, in 1948 the line was principally a tourist attraction. British Rail operated the line using steam locomotives, long after the withdrawal of standard-gauge steam. The Vale of Rheidol Railway was privatised in 1964, as Johnson found the railway was insufficient for restarting goods traffic, and continues to operate as a private heritage railway.

Other preserved lines, or heritage railways, have reopened lines previously closed by British Rail; in most cases, these lines were directly donated by BR during the 1960s route reductions. Many have links to the National Rail network, both at station interchanges, for example the Severn Valley Railway between Kidderminster and Kidderminster Town, and physical rail connections like the Watercress Line at Alton; several heritage lines have since been recommissioned as common carrier lines, mainly in the form of BR operating freight services while the heritage railway runs its own passenger services at BRs behest.

Although most are operated solely as leisure amenities, some also provide educational resources, and a few have ambitions to restore commercial services over routes abandoned by the nationalised industry.

Ships
British Railways operated ships from its formation in 1948 on several routes. Many ships were acquired on nationalisation, and others were built for operation by British Railways or its later subsidiary, Sealink. Those ships capable of carrying rail vehicles were classed under TOPS as Class 99.

Sealink
Sealink was originally the brand name for the ferry services of British Rail in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Services to France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were run by Sealink UK as part of the Sealink consortium which also used ferries owned by French national railways (SNCF), the Belgian Maritime Transport Authority Regie voor Maritiem Transport/Regie des transports maritimes (RMT/RTM) and the Dutch Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland (Zeeland Steamship Company).

Historically, the shipping services were exclusively an extension of the railways across the English Channel and the Irish Sea in order to provide through, integrated services to mainland Europe and Ireland. As international travel became more popular in the late 1960s and before air travel became generally affordable, the responsibility for shipping services was taken away from the British Rail Regions and in 1969 centralised in a new division – British Rail Shipping and International Services Division.

With the advent of car ferry services, the old passenger-only ferries were gradually replaced by roll-on/roll-off ships, catering for motorists and rail passengers as well as road freight. However, given that there was now competition in the form of other ferry companies offering crossings to motorists, it became necessary to market the services in a normal business fashion (as opposed to the previous almost monopolistic situation). Thus, with the other partners mentioned above, the brand name Sealink was introduced for the consortium.

In the late 1960s, as demand for international rail travel declined and the shipping business became almost exclusively dependent on passenger and freight vehicle traffic, the ferry business was incorporated as Sealink UK Limited on 1 January 1979, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Railways Board, but still part of the Sealink consortium. In 1979, Sealink acquired Manx Line which offered services to the Isle of Man from Heysham.

On 27 July 1984, Sealink was folded into the larger Continental Shipping Lines operation, though the Sealink name endured until 2016.

Hovercraft
The joint hovercraft services of British Rail (under British Rail Hovercraft Limited) in association with the French SNCF. British Rail Hovercraft Limited was established in 1965, under authority given to it by the British Railways Act 1967 and started its first service in 1966. Seaspeed started cross-Channel services from Dover, England to Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer, France using SR-N4 hovercraft in August 1968. Seaspeed became a Continental Shipping Lines operation the same day as Sealink, and was shut down in 1994 with the opening of the Channel Tunnel.

British Rail Engineering Limited
Incorporated on 31 October 1969, British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) was a wholly owned railway systems engineering subsidiary of the British Railways Board. Created to manage BR's thirteen workshops, it replaced the British Rail Workshops Division which had existed since 1948. The works managed by BREL were Ashford, Crewe, Derby Locomotive Works, Derby Litchurch Lane, Doncaster, Eastleigh, Glasgow (formerly St Rollox), Horwich Foundry, Shildon, Swindon, Temple Mills, Wolverton, and York. BREL began trading in 1970 under managing director A.E. Robson.

Advanced Passenger Train
In the 1970s, British Rail developed tilting train technology in the Advanced Passenger Train; there had been earlier experiments and prototypes in other countries, notably Italy. The objective of the tilt was to minimise the discomfort to passengers caused by taking the curves of the West Coast Main Line at high speed. The APT also had hydrokinetic brakes, which enabled the train to stop from 150 mph within existing signal spacings.

The introduction into service of the Advanced Passenger Train was to be a three-stage project. Phase 1, the development of an experimental APT (APT-E), was completed. This used a gas turbine-electric locomotive, the only multiple unit so powered that was used by British Rail. It was formed of two power cars (numbers PC1 and PC2), initially with nothing between them and later, two trailer cars (TC1 and TC2). The cars were made of aluminium to reduce the weight of the unit and were articulated. The gas turbine was dropped from development, due to excessive noise and the high fuel costs of the late 1970s. The APT-E first ran on 25 July 1971. The train drivers' union, ASLEF, black-listed the train due to its use of a single driver. The train was moved to Derby (with the aid of a locomotive inspector). This triggered a one-day strike by ASLEF that cost BR more than the research budget for the entire year.

Phase 2, the introduction of three prototype trains (APT-P) into revenue service on the Glasgow – London Euston route, did occur. Originally, there were to have been eight APT-P sets running, with minimal differences between them and the main fleet. However, financial constraints lead to only three being authorised, after two years of discussion by the British Railways Board. The cost was split equally between the Board and the Ministry of Transport. After these delays, considerable pressure grew to put the APT-P into revenue-service before they were fully ready. This inevitably lead to high-profile failures as a result of technical problems.

These failures led to the trains being withdrawn from service while the problems were ironed out. However, by this time, managerial and political support had evaporated. Consequently, phase 3, the introduction of the Squadron fleet (APT-S), did not occur, and the project was ended in 1982.

Although the APT never properly entered service, the experience gained enabled the construction of other high-speed trains. The APT powercar technology was imported without the tilt into the design of the Class 91 locomotives, and the tilting technology was incorporated into Italian State Railway's Pendolino trains, which first entered service in 1987, and later the ill-fated InterCity 250 trains in 1997.

InterCity 125
The InterCity 125 (originally Inter-City 125, or High Speed Train) is a diesel-powered passenger train built by British Rail Engineering Limited between 1975 and 1984. It is usually called HST. Each set is made up of two Class 43 power cars, one at each end and four to nine Mark 3 carriages. The name is derived from its top operational speed of 125 mph (201 km/h). Initially the sets were classified as Classes 253 and 254.

The prototype InterCity 125 (power cars 43000 and 43001) set the world speed record for diesel traction at 143.2 mph (230.5 km/h) on 12 June 1973.

InterCity 225
The InterCity 225 is an electric high speed train in the United Kingdom, comprising a Class 91 electric locomotive, nine Mark 4 coaches and a Driving Van Trailer (DVT). Initially designed for the East Coast Main Line, after electrification of the ECML was shelved, they were instead designed for the West Coast Main Line. Following the failure of the InterCity 250, the InterCity 225 became the primary express train on the WCML.

InterCity 250
The InterCity 250 train consisted of a Class 93 electric locomotive, nine Mark 5 coaches and a Mark 5 Driving Van Trailer operating in a push-pull formation. The trains used the tilting technology from the APT, and entered service along the West Coast Main Line in 1997. They were pulled from service four months later after severe cracks were discovered in one of the Class 93 locomotives during maintenance. It was soon discovered that all of the Class 93 locomotives had the same cracks. Johnson, unable to find any form of fix, withdrew and scrapped the Class 93 locomotives, bringing the entire InterCity 250 project to a grinding halt. The Mark 5 coaches and DVTs, meanwhile, were structurally sound and remained in service as push-pull sets with the Class 92 electric locomotive, an arrangement that remains to this day; in this configuration, the sets are also seen on the East Coast Main Line operating with Class 23 diesel locomotives, and all have their tilting mechanisms disabled.

Other High-Speed Trains
Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, other classes of high-speed train were designed and constructed by BREL to the Mark 5 bodyshell. These included the Class 180 "Adelante" for the Great Western Main Line, Class 220 "Voyager", Class 221 "Super Voyager", and Class 222 "Meridian" for the Cross Country Route and West Coast Main Line (the 221 being built with a tilting mechanism, thus filling the gap left by the InterCity 250s failure), Class 390 "Pendolino" (which supplanted the Class 221s on the WCML), and the Class 395 "Javelin" for the Grand Central Main Line. The Class 373 and 374 were designed and built in cooperation with France and Belgium for the Eurostar services from London to Paris and Brussels, essentially being TGV trainsets modified to fit the British loading gauge.

InterCity Express Programme
The Intercity Express Programme (IEP) is an initiative to build new trains to replace the InterCity 125 fleets on the East Coast Main Line and Great Western Main Line. These new trains would be built by BREL as part of their A-train family, classified as Class 800 electro-diesel units and Class 801 electric multiple units.