The design classic of the British Rail double arrow symbol has been made over again – can’t they leave anything alone? Some years ago, the Orwellian-named Rail Delivery Group (RDG) decided to change the colours in the iconic symbol for no better reason than to show it wasn’t actually British Rail. No need, we know.
GREENWASHING
Now it’s gone green, but in various shades like a really bad application of weed and feed to your lawn. Hilariously, the RDG wrote a complimentary quote for the original designer, Gerry Barney, to sign off, being convinced of what a great job its design consultant had told them they had done. The response elevated Mr Barney from hero to legend in my book. ‘It’s a load of old b******s’ he said, and he didn’t sign.
It is obviously right that railways market themselves as a green form of transport, although we must hope nobody examines the claim too carefully. I first wrote about the subject in May 2008, and we knew long before that what was needed to clean things up, yet the mission of the Department for Transport seems to have been to dream up reasons to avoid electrification, while Railtrack/ Network Rail managed to make it more expensive than anywhere else in the world.…
