Network SouthEast

10th June 1986 saw one of the railway’s most striking branding exercises unveiled to dignitaries, journalists and passengers and saw the start of one of our railway’s best loved brands.

Chris Green, 72, still shows a passion for railways with an engaging style.

Chris Green was already twenty years into a railway management career and had successfully given ScotRail a regional identity in his tenure as manager from 1984 before moving south to become the Director of the London and SouthEast sector.

Although sectorisation had created the London & South East business unit in 1982 the commuter railways of the south-east didn’t really have a brand identity, just an inheritance of aging stock and bruised morale charged with reducing costs and increasing revenue. Chris says, “At a time when subsidies from government were to be reduced, increasing fares and maintaining passenger numbers would have been unpopular as would cutting staff. There needed to be a better way”.

“Operation Pride came first during the early parts of 1986, a programme of talking to staff to show that we cared about them too. Seemingly small things, such as cleaners having a good mop and bucket to do the job, could make a big difference on morale and a tangible improvement for customers. It was about giving local staff more freedom and responsibility and to take a pride in their station. Improving mess rooms and staff accommodation were a priority before the publicly visible changes.”

The big physical change in the eyes of the customer would be the branding as Chris explains, “Through a competitive tendering process with advertising agencies we developed the image which was to make a bright and tangible difference to the parts of the railway the customers saw, the stations, the stock and the publicity. A design manual was built up to illustrate how the new image should be applied with strict guides to ensure continuity.”

[Panel – Network SouthEast colours]

Red – Pantone 185

Blue – Pantone 300

Grey – Pantone 421

Pantone 421 was found to be too light for rolling stock after initial tests so Pantone 431 was used for stock and instances, such as maps, where a darker grey improved clarity.

After a period of time in service the original mid-blue was prone to fading so a revised livery for locomotives changing from the upward sweep of red, blue and grey lines up the cab to a darker blue bodyside with the yellow wrapping around the edge of the cab front in a chevron form. [Photo ?]

Service improvements

“Strategic objectives were set to improve punctuality from 84% to 90% of trains on the busiest commuter network in Europe arriving within five minutes of their scheduled time, to reduce cancelled services to less than 1%, every train to be cleaned before commencing its daily services and we wanted to reduce ticket office queues and telephone enquiry waiting times. To deliver better performance we invested in recruiting 1,700 extra staff – train crews, booking and telephone enquiry personnel, station and train cleaning teams.”

For the launch day each of the sub-sectors, Thames & Chiltern, North, Anglia, Southeast, Southcentral and Southwest had at least one station and train decorated in the new corporate style. Dennis Lovett, now Bachmann Europe’s Public Relations Manager, then a PR manager working for Chris Green, spent the night before the launch at Richmond station which was the chosen station in the Southwest sub-sector. As Dennis says “We kept the whole image secret until the last possible moment, that would probably not be possible these days in the days of phones with cameras and the internet. Even the stock for the public launch at Waterloo was hidden behind other rakes in the sidings near the old Necropolis station.”

It would take a time for the new image to be rolled out across all the stock and stations but the intention was there to achieve this within four years. Interim differences were made with Network Southeast flashes appearing on rolling stock such as the Mark 2 coaches on the locomotive hauled services to Exeter for example.

Photographs of local managers complete with phone numbers for people with complaints to ring, were posted on platforms. Staff wore name badges; stations were cleaned by specially recruited gangs; smart new litter bins and chairs were installed; passenger information boards were made more user-friendly; staff were encouraged to talk to customers; and previously bleak concourses were brightened by the addition of branches of Sock Shop and Tie Rack.

Marketing

Chris explains, “As a commuter network the trains were full morning and evening but not during the day or at weekends. The alternative to increasing fares for commuters was to improve revenue by getting more passengers onto empty trains at off-peak times which was achieved through marketing our services through leaflets and media adverts showing where we could take people to for leisure. We made car parking free after 10.30, we had leaflets delivered locally near key stations targeting leisure destinations, we sponsored high profile events such as the Hampton Court Flower Show and we publicised our Network days – in 1986 £3.00 would get you anywhere on the Network in a day, we publicised depot and gala days. In the first year we achieved a 5% increase in passenger number and a £66m increase in passenger revenue.”

Even model railway exhibitions were promoted by Network SouthEast, the forerunner of our Alexandra Palace show gave significant benefits to advanced bookers.

Customers could buy a Network Card £10 for the year, which gave a third off travel for the holder, family and friends, the introduction of the Capitalcard meant that the passenger could use Network trains, underground and bus services with a single ticket. Such through ticketing made life easier once you reached London without having to queue for additional ticket purchases. 19878/88 saw a further 8.5% increase in passenger numbers and an additional £95m in ticket revenue above the previous year. In the same year punctuality had risen to 92% and cancellations were down to 0.2%, an impressive turnaround inside two years which is a testament to the vision of a railwayman who cared passionately and helped staff to deliver a better service and create a business which could manage with less subsidy.

Developments

These encouraging results meant a boost to sector‘s capital investment programme of £830m which facilitated the following schemes:

Completion of Tonbridge to Hastings electrification.Completion of Wickford/Southminster and Romford/Upminster electrification.Commencement of electric services between Peterborough and King‘s Cross.Commencement of electric services between Cambridge and Liverpool Street.

Other electrification schemes were started including Royston and Cambridge, South Croydon to East Grinstead and Bournemouth to Weymouth.

The new class 442s for the Bournemouth line (Wessex Electrics) and Class 319s for the new Thameslink passenger service went into construction.

The end of an era

Whilst Chris had moved onwards to become Managing Director of the Intercity sector in 1992 privatisation in 1994 meant that the former Network SouthEast sector was broken up into 11 individual shadow franchises. Whilst de-branding took place on a piecemeal basis until individual franchise holders established their identities the Network SouthEast brand lived on in signs and can still be seen to this day at some locations.

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Chris Green, Dennis Lovett, the Network SouthEast Society and Tony Hillman for their assistance.

A Thames & Chiltern DMU participating in an open day at Aylesbury station operating a shuttle service to the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre – Dennis Lovett

Class 455, 455850, stands in the bay platform at Richmond on the first day of Network SouthEast, 10th June 1986 – Dennis Lovett

[Panel - NSE in numbers]

41,000 staff

2350 miles of routes

930+ stations

400,000 commuters into London per day

50,400 services per week

5968 EMUs

479 DMUs

443 branded carriages

35 depots

[Panel - Route branding]

Each of the sub-sectors came to brand individual lines from 1988 to give localized identities with vinyls applied to multiple units, the main ones are as follows:

Subdivision

Main Route(s) Route Description

Chiltern London Marylebone-Aylesbury/Banbury

Great Eastern

London Liverpool Street-Ipswich/Harwich/Clacton-on-Sea/Walton-on-the-Naze/Southend Victoria

Great Northern

London King's Cross-Peterborough/Cambridge (and subsequently London King's Cross-Cambridge-King's Lynn)

Island Line Ryde-Shanklin

Kent LinkLondon Victoria/Charing Cross-Dartford/Gravesend/Gillingham/Orpington/Sevenoaks/Hayes

Kent Coast

London Victoria/Charing Cross-Margate/Dover/Folkestone/Ashford/Tunbridge Wells/Hastings (and subsequently North Downs services as far as Redhill/Three Bridges)

London, Tilbury and Southend

London Fenchurch Street - Tilbury - Southend Central - Shoeburyness

North Downs

Reading-Guildford-Reigate-Gatwick Airport-Tonbridge

Northampton Line/North London Lines

London Euston/Broad Street-Watford-Milton Keynes-Northampton-Birmingham, Bedford-Bletchley

Solent and Wessex

London Waterloo-Guildford-Portsmouth, London Waterloo-Basingstoke-Southampton-Bournemouth-Weymouth

South London Lines

London Victoria & London Bridge to Croydon

London Victoria-East Grinstead/Uckfield/Sutton/Epsom Downs/Dorking/Horsham

South Western Lines

London Waterloo-Alton/Reading/Windsor/Guildford/Epsom/Chessington South/Dorking/Hampton Court/Kingston Circle/Shepperton/Hounslow Circle/Weybridge

Sussex Coast

London Victoria/London Bridge-Gatwick Airport-Brighton/Eastbourne/Littlehampton, Brighton-Hastings, Brighton-Portsmouth-Southampton

ThamesLondon Paddington-Slough- (-Windsor-) Reading-Oxford-Worcester/Stratford

Thameslink Bedford-Luton-London-Gatwick Airport-Brighton

Waterloo & City

Waterloo-Bank

West Anglia

London Liverpool Street-Harlow-Cambridge-King's Lynn (express services to Cambridge, and almost all services to King's Lynn, were subsequently transferred to the Great Northern route from London King's Cross); London Liverpool Street-Stansted Airport

West of England

London Waterloo-Basingstoke-Salisbury-Exeter