Regional Railways

Regional Railways (originally Provincial) was one of three passenger sectors of British Rail. It was created in 1982 and was the most subsidised (per passenger km) of the three sectors; upon formation, its costs were four times its revenue.[1] The sector was broken up into eight franchises during the privatisation of British Rail and ceased to exist on 31 March 1997.

Formation

Upon sectorisation in 1982, three passenger sectors were created: InterCity, operating principal express services; London & South East (renamed Network SouthEast in 1986) operating commuter services in the London area, and Provincial (renamed Regional Railways in 1989) responsible for all other passenger services.[1] In the metropolitan counties, local services were managed by the Passenger Transport Executives.

Services

Regional Railways inherited a diverse range of routes, comprising both express and local services. Expresses mainly ran to non-principal destinations or on less popular routes, such as Birmingham or Liverpool to Norwich, or Liverpool to Scarborough, and were chiefly operated by older locomotives and second-hand InterCity coaches. Later, these services were operated by Sprinter units – mainly on express services. There were also the internal Scottish Region local services and expresses, the latter including the Edinburgh Waverley-Glasgow Queen Street push-pull service.[1]

Local services ran on both main lines and branch lines and were often operated by first generation diesel multiple units dating back to the 1950s. Longer distance trains were often formed of older coaches and locomotives of, and , which were of a similar vintage.

Development of new rolling stock

In the early 1980s, large numbers of first generation diesel multiple units (DMUs) and locomotive-hauled coaches were found to contain asbestos. Removing it would be a considerable cost while generating no extra revenue; coupled with the increasingly unreliable old locomotives and DMUs, this prompted BR to look for a new generation of diesel multiple units.[3]

The prototype, in service on a trial basis since 1981, was considered too expensive to be put into production, so British Rail (BR) looked elsewhere for new designs.[1]

Rolling stock

Liveries

Initially, many vehicles carried standard British Rail blue livery.

From 1986, Provincial adopted a version of the prototype Class 150 livery: aircraft blue over white, with a light blue stripe at waist level. All new units, plus a few existing ones, such as selected EMUs, received it.[29] Some units and coaches received the livery with either ScotRail or Regional Railways branding.[30] In the North West, the light blue stripe was replaced with a mid-green one on refurbishments from 1995 to 1998.[31]

The Class 158s, introduced in 1989, appeared in Express livery: dark grey window surrounds over light grey, with light and dark blue stripes at waist level.[32] Later, Alphaline would replace the Express wording; this colour scheme was also applied to some Class 156 units around privatisation.[32]

The Class 323 EMUs introduced in 1994 appeared in West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE) Centro livery for its units[33] and Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) livery for Manchester-based sets.[34]

After privatisation, many vehicles continued to carry the basic Regional Railways colour scheme, but with the addition of different branding, e.g. Central Trains.[32]

The final British railway vehicle to carry Regional Railways livery was a, which was repainted in July 2008 into East Midlands Trains' colours.[35]

Split for privatisation

As part of the process of privatisation between 1994 and 1997, Regional Railways was split into several different shadow train operating units, which later became independent train operating companies:[36]

Further reading

External links

• Regional Railways Identity Management – internal branding manual, 1992