Station Signs

bbuzz

One thing I've noticed about railway stations in this country (apart from Dart stations) is that the lack of signage at the entrance to the station to tell people what it is. In Britain they have a common sign for all stations and it's clear to tourists that's it's a train station:



Maybe with the new logo it's time to do something similar, for example what they have at Monasterevin station.

Judgement Day

Is that the old station building - semi derelict - that you can see over the attractive pallisade fencing?

gobnaitolunacy

It's a bit grubby, but does the job.
The BR double arrow is great as an instantly recognisable symbol, esp. when it works just as well without wording to signify 'railway' or 'railway station'.... something the current IR/IE (or whatever it calls itself now) attempt at a logo fails to do.

Interesting to note that BR is technically defunct since 2000 and its logo is still in circulation.

gobnaitolunacy

Judgement Day wrote: »

Is that the old station building - semi derelict - that you can see over the attractive pallisade fencing?

Looks like it, I think someone actually lives in that!

bbuzz

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

Looks like it, I think someone actually lives in that!

You're right, there's no gates and it doesn't look boarded up, I'd say someone's going in and out of it fairly regularly anyway! Don't think I could live that close to a railway line.

gobnaitolunacy

Might not be so bad, the upper floor would have been the former booking office, the living quarters would be on the ground floor.
Add to that, fairly thick walls to deaden the noise of passing trains.

Has a very horror movie set feel to it though!

The BR logo is now used as the National Rail logo, hence why it's still seen in regular use.

Judgement Day

Massive house alright but probably maintained to the highest standards of Iarnrod Eireann. You would get used to the noise - I lived that close to the railway on two occasions. I was going to rent Ballybrophy in the late 1980s, but it was rotten then so God knows what's it like today.

bbuzz

bbuzz wrote: »

You're right, there's no gates and it doesn't look boarded up, I'd say someone's going in and out of it fairly regularly anyway! Don't think I could live that close to a railway line.

Judgement Day wrote: »

Massive house alright but probably maintained to the highest standards of Iarnrod Eireann. You would get used to the noise - I lived that close to the railway on two occasions. I was going to rent Ballybrophy in the late 1980s, but it was rotten then so God knows what's it like today.

I used to live in a house on St Patrick's Road in Drumcondra, literally right beside the railway embankment with the station above. At first it took me a while to get used to it, was often woken up at about 5:30am with trains heading over, but I got used to it fairly quickly. Now when 071s passed overhead, that was something else.

icdg

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

It's a bit grubby, but does the job.
The BR double arrow is great as an instantly recognisable symbol, esp. when it works just as well without wording to signify 'railway' or 'railway station'.... something the current IR/IE (or whatever it calls itself now) attempt at a logo fails to do.

Interesting to note that BR is technically defunct since 2000 and its logo is still in circulation.

At the time of privatisation all British Railways Board trademarks (other than, I think, the name "British Rail" itself) were transferred to the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising, other than the double arrows symbol - which at the time was the actual corporate logo of the BRB - which was transferred to the Secretary of State for Transport. It remains a prescribed symbol in Great Britain to signify a mainline railway station. Its also used by Rail Settlement Plan (the clearing house for tickets) on train tickets (which look identical to the pre-January 1996 BRB tickets but have "British Rail" changed to "Rail Settlement Plan") and by the Association of Train Operating Companies on marketing as part of its National Rail brand.

It seems that despite privatisation, they were very reluctant to get rid of the instantly recognisable symbol of UK railways. It never went away although in the immediate aftermath of privatisation it tended to be played down as the new companies sought to establish themselves. However as franchisees tend to turn over with riddiculous regularity the double-arrow logo is the only logo which tends to stick around on Britain's railways.

As for Ireland, Irish Rail could learn a lot from BR. They seemed to have been recently finally adopting the IE logo in a similar way to the BR logo in the last few years but they seem to have changed their mind recently - some Maynooth line stations have had their IE logos removed in the last twelve months and replaced by generic "train" symbols. And this is before we had any notion of the rebrand that's just happened. So it seems IE don't really know what they are doing.

bbuzz

icdg wrote: »

As for Ireland, Irish Rail could learn a lot from BR. They seemed to have been recently finally adopting the IE logo in a similar way to the BR logo in the last few years but they seem to have changed their mind recently - some Maynooth line stations have had their IE logos removed in the last twelve months and replaced by generic "train" symbols. And this is before we had any notion of the rebrand that's just happened. So it seems IE don't really know what they are doing.

I suppose that's my point, there needs to be a clear branding strategy for train stations. If you look at France, the current SNCF logo is probably worse than the new Irish Rail logo, but at least they put it clearly on each train station. So people begin to associate that logo with trains, and that's what IR need to do.