UK - Names unfit for a train

[John Ashworth]

Names unfit for a train

The absurd rebranding of railway operators epitomises all that is wrong with privatisation

* Andrew Martin
* The Guardian,
* Monday February 11 2008

This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday February 11 2008 on p29 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:04 on February 11 2008.

The news that the train operating company called "one" was changing its name to National Express East Anglia was greeted with relief in the railway press. No longer would journalists have to remember that the name was to be spelt out in lower case. No longer would they have to buttress the fey weakling with inverted commas to prevent references to it from becoming nonsensical.

The name was introduced at vast expense in 2004, and will be eliminated at vast expense by the end of the month. A fitting obituary would be a chronicle of all the misunderstandings and double-takes it must have caused among the commuters using the operator's trains from Liverpool Street. "I'll meet you on the seven-thirty 'one' train." It must have created particular havoc with the conversations of very posh people: "One takes 'one"s train at one ..." And just try putting the word "one" into an internet search engine.

The story of the name is a little parable on the absurdity of railway privatisation. In 2004 the Strategic Rail Authority decided that Britain's railway was too fragmented, and so amalgamated the four East Anglian franchises into one. Of late, "one" spokespeople have contended that the name was simply an acknowledgement of that amalgamation, and that the true name of the company was in fact "one Railway".

But it is listed everywhere at Liverpool Street as "one", and the name - together with the rainbow colour scheme on its trains and the egalitarian lower-case spelling - suggests that the company's PR people were attempting some sort of creepy statement of inclusivity. Supporting evidence is provided by the fact that in 2002 the parent company, National Express, named another of its franchises (serving the Fenchurch Street to Southend route) c2c. Perhaps it was just trying to get written about, as when the Post Office had a midlife crisis and became Consignia. But the company has archly suggest that it might stand for "commitment to customers", in which case here is another name reflecting the ingratiating tendency of what used to be called capitalism.

As a teenage member of the Young Communist League I was educated to believe that no private company was my friend. They paid people too little in order to generate goods or services for which they charged too much. Even in my mellower maturity, I bridle at oleaginous names like Phones 4 You. Who else would they be for, apart from us mugs? I feel queasy when I see that all the pens in a Barclays bank are emblazoned with matey, blokeish slogans ("What a signing", "Don't leave me on the bench") and I know that the television presenter who says, "But we want to know what you think" is in fact lying.

I see all this toadying as an attempt to disorientate me. I don't mind being called "mate" by a man in the pub, but I don't want to be so addressed by a private company, least of all a railway company. You can call a TV channel Dave, but not an organisation to which people entrust their lives. We want stolid names for our train operators. In Victorian and Edwardian times, a baldly factual approach was usually taken (Mid-Suffolk Light Railway, Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway) or company names carried the prefix Great - permissible grandiosity that did at least suggest high aims.

The railway revival is bringing a reversion to that more sober tone. Yes, Virgin Trains still sounds its note of juvenile provocation. But "one" is history, and c2c may soon make way for something less like a text message. What was once Silverlink Metro is now sensible London Overground, and the two newest train operating companies are called Grand Central and Wrexham and Shropshire.

The "one" episode arises from an attempt to make a natural monopoly function as a series of private businesses. The turnover of franchises fosters the cult of the relaunch, and so millions of pounds are wasted on PR. The enterprise has also created a gigantic bureaucracy, and made the railways incomprehensible. National Express says that the name change is a contribution to simplifying an over-complicated network. It's a pity this simplification can't be taken to its logical conclusion, and that an elegant, unpretentious name can't be applied to the result. Something like, say, British Railways.

· Andrew Martin's novel Death on a Branch Line will be published in June.
andrew.jmartin@virgin.net