Rail Alphabet is a

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands ...

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four (British ra ...

network. First used at

Liverpool Street station Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, in the ward of Bishopsgate Without. It is the ...

, it was then adopted by the Design Research Unit (DRU) as part of their comprehensive 1965 rebranding of the company. A modernised font Rail Alphabet 2 is planned to be used across the

Great British Railways Great British Railways (GBR) is a planned state-owned public body that will oversee rail transport in Great Britain from 2024, with the exception of Transport for London, Merseytravel services, and light rail and trams elsewhere in England ...

network, whilst the double arrow logo will also be restored as the primary brand identifier for the network. Rail Alphabet is similar to a bold weight of

Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (189 ...

, but with some differences in character shapes, stroke width and

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the let ...

to aid legibility. The font also has some similarities to

Akzidenz-Grotesk Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. ''german: label=none, italic=no, "Akzidenz"'' indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tick ...

, which had earlier provided the same designers the broad inspiration for the

Transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipel ...

typeface used for road signs in the United Kingdom. The font was designed specifically for signage and the designers included features to support this such as a bespoke

letter-spacing Examples of headline letter spacing In typography, letter spacing, character spacing or tracking is an optically consistent adjustment to the space between letters to change the visual density of a line or block of text. Letter spacing is disti ...

system and two slightly different weights to provide optimum visibility on both light and dark backgrounds.

British Rail

In 1949, the Railway Executive decided on standard types of signs to be used at all stations. Lettering was to use redrawn versions of

Gill Sans Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Undergro ...

lettering on a background of the regional colour. This style persisted for nearly 15 years. In the early 1960s, British Railways (which rebranded as British Rail in 1965) trialled new signs at Coventry station that made use of Kinneir and Calvert's recently launched Transport typeface. While Transport has since been an enduring success on road signs, it was designed around the specific needs of road users – such as visibility at speed and in all weathers. The subsequent creation of Rail Alphabet was intended to provide a style of lettering more specifically suited to stations where it would primarily be viewed indoors by pedestrians. The Design Research Unit's 1965 rebranding of British Railways included a new logo (the double arrow), a shortened name

, and the total adoption of Rail Alphabet for all lettering other than printed matter including station signage, trackside signs, fixed notices, signs inside trains and train liveries. Key elements of the rebranding were still being used during much of the 1980s and Rail Alphabet was also used as part of the livery of Sealink ships until that company's privatisation in the late 1980s. However, by the end of the 1980s, British Rail's various business units were developing their own individual brands and identities with use of Rail Alphabet declining as a consequence. The typeface remained in near-universal use for signs at railway stations but began to be replaced with alternatives in other areas, such as in InterCity's 1989 Mark 4 passenger carriages which made use of Frutiger for much of their interior signage.

After British Rail

The

privatisation of British Rail The privatisation of British Rail was the process by which ownership and operation of the railways of Great Britain passed from government control into private hands. Begun in 1994, it had been completed by 1997. The deregulation of the industr ...

from 1994 accelerated the decline in use of the typeface on the railway network with most of the privatised

train operating companies A train operating company (TOC) is a business operating passenger trains on the railway system of Great Britain under the collective National Rail brand. TOCs have existed since the privatisation of the network under the Railways Act 1993. The ...

who now manage individual stations choosing to use the fonts associated with their own corporate identities for station signs and publicity. More recently, the custom Brunel typeface introduced by

Railtrack Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of ...

for signs at major stations and adapted by

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

NR Brunel The NR Brunel typeface is the Network Rail standard for signing at Network Rail managed stations. This font is an evolution of the Brunel typeface designed by a specialist typeface design company, The Foundry, for Railtrack in 1999 and adopted ...

was recommended as a new national standard for station signs by a 2009 report commissioned by the Secretary of State for Transport, and was used extensively by South West Trains and East Midlands Trains. Meanwhile, Helvetica Medium has replaced Rail Alphabet as the industry's preferred typeface for safety notices within passenger trains due to the ready availability of the former and for consistency with British Standards on general safety signs. Some train operators continued use of Rail Alphabet long into the privatisation era.

Arriva Trains Wales Arriva Trains Wales (ATW; cy, Trenau Arriva Cymru) was a British train operating company owned by Arriva UK Trains that operated the Wales & Borders franchise. It ran urban and inter-urban passenger services to all railway stations in Wales ...

used the font until the end of the franchise in 2018, with

First Great Western Great Western Railway (GWR) is a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup that operates the Greater Western passenger railway franchise. It manages 197 stations and its trains call at over 270. GWR operates long-distance inter-cit ...

also making extensive use of Rail Alphabet for signage until the firm's rebranding to Great Western Railway in 2015.

Merseyrail Merseyrail is a commuter rail network serving the Liverpool City Region and adjacent areas of Cheshire and Lancashire. Merseyrail operates 66 railway stations across two lines – the Northern Line and Wirral Line, which are dedicated elect ...

continues to use the typeface for station signage. The use of the typeface is also still prescribed by standards for trackside warning signs and safety/operating notices.

Other uses

Dsb-s-bahnlinie-f-bahnhof-klampenborg-699386

The

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

in England, Scotland and Wales adopted Rail Alphabet for its signs. It is still the dominant typeface used on signs in older hospitals. It ceased to be used in new builds in the late 1990s. NHS England now uses Frutiger, while

NHS Scotland NHS Scotland, sometimes styled NHSScotland, is the publicly funded healthcare system in Scotland and one of the four systems that make up the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It operates 14 territorial NHS boards across Scotland, ...

uses Stone Sans. Rail Alphabet was widely used on signs by the British Airports Authority and by Danish railway company DSB. Road signs in Iran used Rail Alphabet typeface for English texts.

Digitisation and updates

New Rail Alphabet

In 2009, a newly digitised version of the typeface was publicly released. Created by Henrik Kubel of A2/SW/HK in close collaboration with Margaret Calvert, New Rail Alphabet features six weights: off white, white, light, medium, bold and black, with non-aligning numerals, corresponding italics and a set of Eastern European characters.

Rail Alphabet 2

In 2020, it was announced that Network Rail had commissioned an updated version of the typeface. Designed by Margaret Calvert and Henrik Kubel, Rail Alphabet 2 includes lighter versions of the lettering as well as italics for signage along with accompanying versions for use in printed matter and online. The redesign also includes new pictograms to depict services and facilities which did not exist in the 1960s when the original font was conceived – such as gender neutral toilets and vaping areas. In October 2020, Network Rail announced that starting with

London Paddington Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great W ...

, the updated Rail Alphabet 2 font will replace Brunel for all signage on all Network Rail managed major stations on the network. Network Rail will also begin using the font for corporate communications. In May 2021, as part of the Williams Rail Review, it was announced that the new government body