Northern Spirit paint scheme design

[QuoitsPlayer]

Hi everyone

 

I know this is very niche but does anyone have any photos of stations/buildings/lamp posts/columns etc painted in the Northern Spirit house colours please. If anyone has access to the NS design guide (if one existed) and is willing to share the information that would be even better please.

 

I've looked on Flickr and Google but can only a couple of pics from Middlesbrough of columns painted in the white/green/turquoise scheme.

 

Many thanks.

 

Matt

[JDW]

I'm not sure there was much of a Northern Spirit scheme for stations, I certainly can't remember any of the local stations near me changing at the time, but then they're SYPTE. Likewise, lots of the other areas NS served were PTE areas, TWPTE, WYPTE, etc, so I'm not sure there will have been many stations in a specific NS scheme.

[SP Steve]

May 21st 1998 saw the launch of "Northern Spirit" as a brand but it was a little unusual in that three livery schemes were utilised - TPE 158s were given burgundy / gold, local service stock in the form of 'Pacers' and 153 / 156s took the two green livery whilst the PTE 'Metro' stock retained their original maroon and cream but with additional branding.

 

The MTL owned franchise only ran to April 2001 after which Arriva took over and I think this was the cause of a few token splashes of the turquoise colour being seen rather than any specific Northern Spirit influence.

 

It wasn't until the advent of Northern Rail that station signage underwent any sort of mass changeover - I recall that they sold off all replaced signs from across their system and most if not all were from Regional Railways days along with some black & white ones from BR days.

[JDW]

52 minutes ago, SP Steve said:

May 21st 1998 saw the launch of "Northern Spirit" as a brand but it was a little unusual in that three livery schemes were utilised - TPE 158s were given burgundy / gold, local service stock in the form of 'Pacers' and 153 / 156s took the two green livery whilst the PTE 'Metro' stock retained their original maroon and cream but with additional branding.

 

The MTL owned franchise only ran to April 2001 after which Arriva took over and I think this was the cause of a few token splashes of the turquoise colour being seen rather than any specific Northern Spirit influence.

 

It wasn't until the advent of Northern Rail that station signage underwent any sort of mass changeover - I recall that they sold off all replaced signs from across their system and most if not all were from Regional Railways days along with some black & white ones from BR days.

 

That's pretty much it, yep. I hope you won't mind me making a few minor points for the sake of accuracy (should anyone come across this in 50 years time whilst reminiscing about those good old days of the early privatisation era!) and adding a little more detail.

 

Transpennine 158s wore the purple with gold N scheme. Early repaints (possibly just the first one) had a white strip along the bottom, akin to where the solebar would be on older stock. On later repaints, this was replaced by black.

 

Only 142s and 156s wore the blue version with lime green N. Again, the first 142 had a white "solebar" stripe, the rest were black.

144s retained WYPTE red and cream, as did 155s.

 

153s weren't repainted until after the Arriva take-over, and went from Regional Railways to Arriva livery. Some (all?) 142s also received Arriva colours, all other units retained the existing liveries, with just another change of branding. 

 

150s retained Regional Railways colours.

 

158909 received the WYPTE version of the Northern Spirit livery, which was the same as that applied to Transpennine 158s but red with a silver N. All other WYPTE stock retained red/cream until repaints into the red/grey "elipses" livery (red with huge grey semi-circles)

[SP Steve]

13 hours ago, JDW said:

 

That's pretty much it, yep. I hope you won't mind me making a few minor points for the sake of accuracy (should anyone come across this in 50 years time whilst reminiscing about those good old days of the early privatisation era!) and adding a little more detail.

 

Transpennine 158s wore the purple with gold N scheme. Early repaints (possibly just the first one) had a white strip along the bottom, akin to where the solebar would be on older stock. On later repaints, this was replaced by black.

 

Only 142s and 156s wore the blue version with lime green N. Again, the first 142 had a white "solebar" stripe, the rest were black.

144s retained WYPTE red and cream, as did 155s.

 

153s weren't repainted until after the Arriva take-over, and went from Regional Railways to Arriva livery. Some (all?) 142s also received Arriva colours, all other units retained the existing liveries, with just another change of branding. 

 

150s retained Regional Railways colours.

 

158909 received the WYPTE version of the Northern Spirit livery, which was the same as that applied to Transpennine 158s but red with a silver N. All other WYPTE stock retained red/cream until repaints into the red/grey "elipses" livery (red with huge grey semi-circles)

 

Thanks for the added info! Just for completeness, the first 142 (with white stripe) was 142.065 whilst the first 158 (again with the white stripe) was 158.811. Both were given the new look for the launch of Northern Spirit on 21st May 1998 and were sent to Newcastle, York, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Hull to promote the brand (which up until that point had been known by the less than catchy 'Regional Railways North East' (RRNE) title).

 

Regarding 158.909 and the "N" embellishment, was it silver? I have an image of it which suggests that it was a very light grey rather than a metallic silver colour. 

[Alcanman]

Northern Spirit liveried 142 and 158 at Newcastle Central 1999. I always thought these were very smart looking paint schemes.

 

 

[JDW]

12 hours ago, SP Steve said:

 

Thanks for the added info! Just for completeness, the first 142 (with white stripe) was 142.065 whilst the first 158 (again with the white stripe) was 158.811. Both were given the new look for the launch of Northern Spirit on 21st May 1998 and were sent to Newcastle, York, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Hull to promote the brand (which up until that point had been known by the less than catchy 'Regional Railways North East' (RRNE) title).

 

Regarding 158.909 and the "N" embellishment, was it silver? I have an image of it which suggests that it was a very light grey rather than a metallic silver colour. 

 

Ah yes, I should probably have included the numbers! 

 

I'm not 100% sure, it appears more silvery than the later grey used on the "ellipses" livery which followed, but not a particularly metallic silver. I'd sit on the fence and say a silvery-grey or matt silver. I used silver on my model of it, I've only seen one other model and that used silver too. In my case that was as much to do with what was available as a 'rattle-can' though! It looks right, at least.

[Wheatley]

I'm pretty sure 909's N was silver to tie in with the gold ones on the TPE livery. The PTEs were fiercely protective of their brand IDs, certainly stations in WY Metro and SYPTE retained their own colours. Most other stations stayed in RRNE livery until re-branded by ATN, although a few green shelters appeared in the period (Hornbeam Park springs to mind). I don't recall ever seeing any brand guidelines for stations so I suspect the colour was whatever the nearest green in the Macemain catalogue was !

 

MTL were hilarious fun to work for, an a "I'm not locked out of the building so we must still be trading today" sort of a way. 

[crossforth]

Fantastic information to read as I'm currently doing research for my own layout.

 

 

This is another request for brand guidelines for any part of Northern Spirit/TPE or their successor Arriva Trains Northern. If no one has any brand guidelines, would anyone happen to know what fonts were used by these TOCs? I seem to have found that ATN used Arial Bold on the side of their loco hauled stock, was this consistent across all their stock?

[Wheatley]

I remember posting the details of the horrid Northern purple scheme on an old version of the forum, unfortunately I doubt the details of the NS schemes survive in Northern's archive largely because a) there isnt an archive and b) anything on paper will have been binned when we left Main HQ. The Northern Spirit logo was a logo, not a font, you can get close to it with some of the rounded fonts but not an exact match. Arial or Helvetica sounds about right for ATN. Arriva turquiose started out as Pantone 321 but i believe it changed at some point. I can ask a couple of people but the person who would know off the top of his head is no longer with us.