Prior to nationalisation, railways in the United Kingdom were awash with different logos, typefaces and identities.
With the formation of British Railways in 1948 came the opportunity to standardise corporate image, but that has changed once again following privatisation in the 1990s.
You can read our short article on British Railway Fonts: Past & Present here or download typefaces and fonts below.
Gill Sans / British Railways era
In 1949 the Railway Executive (a division of the British Transport Commission) decided on standard types of signs to be used at all stations.
Lettering was to use the Gill Sans typeface on a coloured background, which was determined by the regional division. This style persisted for nearly 15 years.
A copy of the Gill Sans MT font can be downloaded below as a zip file. As far as we are aware, the font is free to distribute for personal use.
★ Gill Sans MT
British Rail Font (Gill Sans) 42.17 KB 6268 downloads
The Gill Sans font, as used by British Railways on and around the UK's railways. ...Rail Alphabet / British Rail era
The original Rail Alphabet typeface is a commercial product, however a free version of two similar fonts was made available a number of years ago via the Railways Archive website and can be found on a variety of other websites and forms.
These fonts are a very close likeness to the original typeface and are ideal for a variety of railway modelling needs. A copy can be downloaded below as a zip file. As far as we are aware, whilst the original typeface Rail Alphabet remains copyrighted, these fonts are free to distribute for personal use.
★ British Rail Light Normal
★ British Rail Dark Normal
British Rail Fonts (Rail Alphabet) 39.61 KB 13705 downloads
Two British Rail-style fonts based on 'Rail Alphabet', as used by British Rail for...Joanna Typeface / Regional Railways era
Regional Railways was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982 (the other two being InterCity and Network SouthEast). Alongside the organisational changes came a new logo and livery.
Joanna, the typeface used for Regional Railways/ScotRail, is a commercial typeface and is not available for free. There are, however, one or two free alternatives which can give reasonable results.
A unicode version of one of the Joanna typeface fonts is widely available. This provides a reasonable likeness for normal and bold text in replicas of platform notices etc. However, it is not heavy enough for recreating the specially-drawn Regional Railways or ScotRail logos.
If you wish to make up your own logos, you may wish to consider using the Jessica-Serial font. As shown below, this is a fairly close match, but will require bold weighting and alterations to leading, tracking and some individual characters’ horizontal and vertical scales.
A zip file containing the following fonts is available. As far as we are aware, the fonts are free to distribute for personal use:
★ Unicode Joanna
★ Jessica-Serial
Regional Railways Font (Substitutes for Joanna) 98.16 KB 2055 downloads
Unicode Joanna and Jessica-Serial fonts: a relatively close match for the Joanna...ITC Officina Typeface / Transport Scotland era
In September 2008, the Scottish Government’s transport agency, Transport Scotland, announced that the franchised Scottish rail services would be permanently renamed ScotRail and a new livery would be applied to all of Scotland’s trains and ScotRail-operated stations.
For locomotives, multiple units and rolling stock, the new livery features a dark blue background, with grey doors and a white dotted ‘Saltire’ Scottish flag. For station names and general signage, dark blue becomes the predominant colour and is used alongside a new typeface called ITC Officina.
This ITC Officina font family is widely available for free download and four of its fonts are available here:
★ ITC Officina Std Book
★ ITC Officina Std Book Italic
★ ITC Officina Std Bold
★ ITC Officina Std Bold Italic
ScotRail ITC Officina Fonts 101.39 KB 1684 downloads
The font used for ScotRail since September 2008, when Transport Scotland announced...Please note: Images not otherwise in the public domain are reproduced here for the purposes of criticism or review.
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