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History of British Railways

History of British Railways
British Rail imagery

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British Rail Corporate Identity - by Nick Jobs

History of British Railways

Introduction
The government authority that regulated railways in the United Kingdom was at first "The Board of Trade, the first government department to assume responsibility for railways. Its Railway Department was created in 1840 but some records predate this office. When the Ministry of Transport was created in 1919 it absorbed all of the Board of Trade functions regarding railways.
Source: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/railways/

The industry in general, evolved from individual and private small railway links starting as early as the 1560s, to the railway boom of the 1840s (dubbed "Rail Mania", especially in 1846, where 272 Acts of Parliament were proposed railway lines) and the three final stages that occurred during the XXth century, namely "separation" (open market competition) (before 1923) (when up to 120 different railway companies existed in the country) to "amalgamation" (grouping into the "Big Four", together with minor companies) to "unification" into the British Railways (1948-onwards until the privatisation and split in the mid 1990s).

Several important Acts in this early era include:
Railway Regulation Act 1844: http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docSummary.php?docID=58 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Regulation_Act_1844
Regulation of Railways Act 1868: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/id?title=Regulation+of+Railways+Act+1868 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Railways_Act_1868
Light Railways Act 1896: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/id?title=Light+Railways+Act+1896 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Railways_Act_1896
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railways_Act#United_Kingdom

"Big Four" was a name used to describe the four largest railway companies in the United Kingdom in the period 1923–1947. The name was coined by The Railway Magazine in its issue of February 1923: "The Big Four of the New Railway Era".
The Big Four were:
Great Western Railway (GWR)
London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS)
London & North Eastern Railway (LNER)
Southern Railway (SR)
The companies were formed as a result of the Railways Act 1921, in a process known as "The Grouping" (of the railways), which came into effect on January 1, 1923. A number of joint lines remained outside the Big Four, continuing to be operated jointly by the successor companies.

On January 1, 1948 the companies were nationalised to form British Railways as a result of the Transport Act 1947.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railways_Act_1921 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_(British_railway_companies)

British Railways
British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the state-owned company first by its parent company, British Transport Commission (BTC) (1948–1962) (which also included various bus companies, ports, canals, and road haulage firms, along with the already publicly-owned London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) which had overseen London Transport since 1933) created under the Transport Act of 1947 and effectively active since January 1, 1948. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive (a Division of the) British Transport Commission, it became an independent statutory corporation in 1962 designated as the British Railways Board (BRB) (1963– October 2001) created under the Transport Act of 1962 and effectively
active since January 1, 1963, that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail (when British Rail divested all of its operating Railway functions and British Railways Board is still responsible for non-operational railway land, the disposal of which is handled through Rail Property Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary), in stages between 1994 and November 1997, mainly due to the Railways Act 1993.

In 1993 the government produced a White Paper entitled 'New opportunities for the railways: the privatisation of British Rail' which proposed the privatisation of the British Railways Board. These proposals were passed into law in the form of the Railways Act 1993, and entailed the disintegration of the British Railways Board's activities into 100 separate parts, each one to be sold or franchised separately. Engineering functions and rolling stock were sold, train operation was franchised, and ownership of the infrastructure, such as track, signalling and stations, was passed onto a new organisation, Railtrack. On privatisation, responsibility for track, signalling and stations was transferred to Railtrack (which was later brought under public control as Network Rail) and that for trains to the train operating companies. Railtrack was formed as a separate company which became operational on April 1, 1994, and was privatised in 1996 (it existed until about October 2002 when it was succeeded by Network Rail). In 2002, after experiencing major financial difficulty, most of Railtrack's operations were transferred to the state-controlled non-profit company Network Rail. The first passenger franchises were let in February 1996 (Great Western and South West Trains), and three principal rail freight companies were sold to English, Welsh and Scottish Railway in the same year. The Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF) was also established by the Railways Act 1993, in which it was set out that the Franchising Director's responsibilities included negotiating and awarding passenger rail franchises on the basis of competitive tendering, and monitoring ongoing performance. In July 1999, OPRAF operated under the title the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority (SSRA). The SSRA was set up to provide strategic planning, and to promote rail travel and freight transport with the aim to encourage private investments in the railways. In effect the SSRA combined the roles of the British Railways Board (BRB) and OPRAF pending Parliament's approval of the new Railways Bill, which would abolish both the position of Director of Passenger Rail Franchising and OPRAF, and would establish the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) as its successor body. Following the Transport Act 2000 the SRA came formally into being by shedding its 'shadow' status. Its key role is to promote and develop the rail network and to encourage integration. In addition to the provision of strategic direction, the SRA has responsibility for consumer protection, investment projects, and managing rail franchises. The SRA is currently involved in the process of replacing all the passenger rail franchises that are due to expire by 2004; and in an effort to increase the train operators' incentive to invest in the railways, the SRA has created new long term franchise contracts of up to 20 years. The remainder of Railtrack was renamed RT Group plc and eventually dissolved on 22 June 2010.
Sources: http://ndad.ulcc.ac.uk/datasets/AH/britrail.htm
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack
http://www.brb.gov.uk/brb.htm,
http://www.dft.gov.uk/rhc/history.asp,
https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BTC_NewOrg1948.pdf,
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/railways/,
https://www.britannica.com/topic/British-Railways,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_Great_Britain,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Transport_Commission,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Executive_Committee,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Railways_Board,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail

As for branding itself however, 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. There was also a logo dubbed "sausage" (or "hot dog") (or totem) in which the name was used over a background in green and white (alternating both colors in font type and background alike). A new logo began to be used since 1949. 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 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 Walter Thomas (a British sculptor and medallist) (other sources mention Abram Games instead, a British Graphic Designer); on the bar overlaid across the wheel, the BTC's name was replaced with the words "British Railways". This logo, nicknamed the "Cycling Lion", 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 London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1923.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail#Branding,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_corporate_liveries,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Thomas_(sculptor),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Games,
http://www.abramgames.com/
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans

Esteban Rivera, 24 July 2020