Gordon Pettitt

Gordon Pettitt

Gordon Pettitt

On 3 December 1990 one of the most fundamental reorganisations within British Rail in recent years got under way. Provincial became Regional Railways. And Regional Railways means all Britain’s passenger services except Intercity and Network SouthEast.

The name is significant. It represents a ‘family’ of railways that are to be operated on a decentralised basis. Each member of the family will aim to provide a service of quality, tuned to meet the specific needs of a readily recognisable area of the country.

All these services will interconnect seamlessly right across England, Wales and Scotland. By April 1992 we shall have reorganised ourselves into five profit centres: ScotRail, North East, North West, Central, and South Wales & West.

The ‘seamlessness’ of the operation will be represented by a new, strong but sympathetic corporate identity scheme. It will provide the ‘family likeness’. At the same time, it is flexible enough to enable staff and public alike to detect a degree of individuality, as in all families. This is particularly true in the case of the Passenger Transport Executives (PTEs) which make such a contribution to the network and plan even greater investment in the near future.

The corporate identity is a theme with variations, but the variations are pre-ordained so as to create a coherent whole.

A large number of people within the organisation have contributed their ideas. The actual scheme, the core of which is contained within the Identity Management binder, is the work of professionals with great experience in this particular field. But they have been building, and continue to build, on a foundation of your ideas. It is very much your corporate identity.

We need to put it in place quickly in order to reap the rewards of nationwide recognition. New stations and trains, and all publications due for reprinting will take on the family characteristics straight away. Existing stations and rolling stock will acquire them as and when they need refurbishing. This will help to control costs and provide us with time to raise the level of our performance. Ideally, our path towards a higher quality service and the public’s path towards greater recognition of us and what we have to offer will coincide within the next two or three years. And that will benefit us all.

Gordon Pettitt, Managing Director

1992 // THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION