What makes a train look British?

[nlogax]

I don't think I have seen anything like single door gangwayed intercity stock like 442s & 444s anywhere outside the UK - some may exist probably not as widespread.

I agree with comnents about gangwayed stock being a British trait

See also the Budd Amfleet stock used on the Northeast Corridor. Ex-Metroliner EMU cabs converted for push-pull use, though some gangways have been sealed over (along same line as Mk2 DBSOs).

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The two that spring to mind are the NS "Koploper" (albeit in an unusual design, and the gangways now out of use) and those Belgian rubber ring things.

There's also the Øresundståg trains (DSB IC3?) with rubber ends that fold out of the way to form a corridor connection.
At least the driver is not shut in a tiny cupboard like on our corridor trains.
IC3 - Wikipedia

 

[janahan]

Having seen the East Anglia Stadler fleet up close and personal, I think I know why they look "European" vs other "British" trains.

Apart from the more restrictive guage and the general "pinching in" at the top and bottom of most British trains, one characteristic I foudn common on british trains, vs Continental Trains is the fact that the "body" panelling of the british train usually starts at the "floor" of the train. Maybe this is due to tradition (body's were built upon a flat base that is at floor level and above the wheel tops) and practicailty as the guage is usually quite restrictive bellow the floor in the UK. The vehicle below the floor level is also often uncovered and a different colour to the body (i know some High speed carraiges/trains such as Mark 3, mark 4, etc have skirts but they are still of a different colour) This gives a clear demarcation of where the floor is and is common on most British trains. Even the D-Trains (and top some extent the the A Stock) look very british, despite the flat sides, as the sides stop at the floor level.

This can make the train look a lot smaller than the restrictive guage would suggest. This also applies ot the front cab where especially the older Classic desiro (both gangwayed and non gangwayed) look a lot more "squat" than an electrostar (whilst appearing wider as they dont pinch in as much on the sides)

The stadlers on the other hand have a body "panel" than goes below the floor, is more european, despite it being designed for the UK Guage. In fact you dont immediately notice how much smaller they are until you see then side by side with a european counterpart.

As an interesting side note, some American carraiges also have the side panels starting at floor level, and sometimes look a lot smaller than they really are.

 

[D6130]

Unit end gangway, we are almost unique in the world for those.

The FS class ALe601 InterCity EMUs built in the early 1960s for the three portion "Marco Polo" first class only services from Roma to Bolzano, Udine and Venezia/Trieste were fitted with quite wide folding end gangways, which confined the drivers to fairly small, cramped cabs. IIRC,they also had an early form of limited tilt mechanism in the bogies, air conditioning and a maximum speed of 180 km/h (112 mph), which was exceeded by a considerable margin on test runs on the new Roma-Chiusi 'Direttissima' high-speed line in the late 1970s, resulting in them being passed for 200 km/h (124 mph) from then onwards. I had the pleasure of riding on one of them in the Summer of 1989 on a Perugia-Roma 'rapido', by which time they had been downgraded to two classes, but still using the original first class seats - minus antimacassars and tables - in the second class cars. They ended their days in the early noughties working regional trains on the Adriatic main line between Ancona and Rimini - and finally on the Palermo-Palermo Airport shuttles in Sicily. Four vehicles - two motor coaches and two trailers - are currently undergoing restoration to original condition for FFSI (the heritage wing of Italian Railways) at the workshops of OMS Ferroviaria at Porrena, near Arezzo, and should be available for charter use when finished.

Quite a few of the brown-painted FS regional and express EMUs built between the 1930s and the 1950s also had end gangways and small cabs for portion working, as do the class ALn663 and 668 diesel railcars which are still in service - albeit in rapidly declining numbers.

 

[AlexNL]

I think a lot of it is psychological. Stick Southern or SouthEastern livery on a foreign train and it’d start to become more British in your minds eye.

Been there, done that.


Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 423 S-Bahn EMU, carrying the livery of Southern, realised using Train Sim World 2's livery designer.


Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 442 'TALENT 2' EMU, carrying the Southeastern blue livery, in TSW2.


I've also done it the other way round


Picture of a Class 377 'Electrostar' multiple unit, carrying the Nederlandse Spoorwegen "Sprinter" livery, in TSW2.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I don't think I have seen anything like single door gangwayed intercity stock like 442s & 444s anywhere outside the UK - some may exist probably not as widespread.

I agree with comnents about gangwayed stock being a British trait

There’s ICM Koplopers in the Netherlands & AM96 units in Belgium, but yet, not as widespread as I had thought.

See also the Budd Amfleet stock used on the Northeast Corridor. Ex-Metroliner EMU cabs converted for push-pull use, though some gangways have been sealed over (along same line as Mk2 DBSOs).

Certainly the use of unit end gangways is far more widespread in Britain than elsewhere, and the narrow sort we use is quite different to the sort used in Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands. The DBSOs are an odd one, as initially the gangways were retained but I don't think they were actually used as such all that much (if at all).

Been there, done that.

View attachment 103864
Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 423 S-Bahn EMU, carrying the livery of Southern, realised using Train Sim World 2's livery designer.

View attachment 103865
Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 442 'TALENT 2' EMU, carrying the Southeastern blue livery, in TSW2.


I've also done it the other way round

View attachment 103866
Picture of a Class 377 'Electrostar' multiple unit, carrying the Nederlandse Spoorwegen "Sprinter" livery, in TSW2.

Those are pretty good, makes me want to look into games such as TSW2!

Back when Serco/Abellio won the Northern franchise, I'd hoped they'd use a livery based on the domestic Dutch livery, as the "foreign" arm of NS had not been "spun off" under the Abellio name at the start of that franchise. The Civil Engineering "Dutch" livery was one of the most attractive that Sectorised BR came up with in my opinion.

 

[ABB125]

50% BIGGER* BAG
* than our smaller-sized and proportionally cheaper bag

In the same realm, I would ban plastic-wrapped multipacks of cans from being cheaper than the same number of cans bought not in the multipack.
If you want to give a discount for buying 8 cans, why not just have a multi-buy offer and save the plastic?

Been there, done that.

View attachment 103864
Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 423 S-Bahn EMU, carrying the livery of Southern, realised using Train Sim World 2's livery designer.

Still looks European!

View attachment 103865
Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 442 'TALENT 2' EMU, carrying the Southeastern blue livery, in TSW2.

Just looks ugly!

I've also done it the other way round

View attachment 103866
Picture of a Class 377 'Electrostar' multiple unit, carrying the Nederlandse Spoorwegen "Sprinter" livery, in TSW2.

I don't know what it is, but there's something here which just doesn't work.

 

[zwk500]

Bulleid Pacifics were not actually pre-war.The first was built in 1941

8th January 1942 - my grandmother writing about a journey back to Devon after a visit back to the family's London home over Christmas. "The loco was of curious pattern and R [my uncle, then aged 14] thought it was really intended for abroad or something"
So at least one knowledgable observer (who spent his spare time helping out at the station in the Devon village where the family lived for most of the War) thought a Bulleid Pacific (for what else could it have been?) looked decidedly un-British

Tbf, the original shape of the Bullied Pacifics (the 'Spam Cans') was radically different from anything seen in the UK at that point, and included a numbering system based on Continental practice. The Rebuilt ones look decidedly more 'traditional' than their unrebuilt cousins/classmates.

 

[Strathclyder]

I always was taken aback by the look of the "Big Boy" locomotives from the other side of the pond.

Concerning the Union Pacific Big Boys (an enlarged version of the earlier Challenger type), it's their sheer size that always gives me pause, more-so than their looks:

 

[Irascible]

All very true, and Britain has suffered a bit from being first. I do seem to recall reading however there was a decision made that Britain didn't need to even bother taking part in the Berne convention, never mind adopt the loading gauge that came from it. Again, with hindsight.....

Brunel's broad-gauge loading gauge was about a foot bigger than Berne gauge in both height and width - the Gauge Commission already decided on how big our railways were going to be ( the cost of converting all ours to Brunel's spec would bave been eye-watering & thats with a smaller network - it's a bit of a pity we didn't try for Irish gauge though ) so not really any point doing it all over with Berne.

I suppose that for manyyears, the mk1 was the standard train being built in the whole Uk, so anything derived from it looks inherantly British. Similarly with Mk2 and 3.

The Mk1 was based on older designs too. I think it's probably mostly how curvy & historically, smoother ( at least for steam engines ) our shapes are & now narrow they are below the doors. And the gangways I guess.

There's a random DB coach that doesn't really look much different to ours, other than being inflated. Make it narrower & give it tumblehome, done.

 

[plugwash]

I disagree. I’d say something like an AM64 has a lot in common with contemporary UK units:

A lot of things in common maybe, but there are a number of things that make it "obviously not UK" to me.

1. The doors, with full width steps for low platforms (UK trains often have steps intended for crew use, but they are much smaller and not at every door).
2. The pantograph, afaict we don't use diamond shaped pantographs in the UK anymore.
3. The coupling doesn't look like anything I've seen on a UK train.
4. The end door doesn't look like anything i've seen in the UK (but there is so much variation among ends of UK units that this is less significant than some of the others)
5. All UK trains of that vintage have large aireas of yellow on the cab end. Some sleek modern UK trains have no yellow at all but I've never seen yellow strips like that in the UK.

And that's the thing, as much as there are things that make a train look british there are also things that make a train look foreign.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

A lot of modern British front ends look continental but then as soon as you see the very boxy, all aligned even rectangular windows and doors, it looks very English and neatly joined up. Many continental units have windows all over the place and fat doors.

 

[Amaroussi]

Yellow fronts, and a smaller loading gauge compared to mainland Europe.

 

[Skie]

Tea stains under the cab drop windows.

 

[janahan]

Been there, done that.

View attachment 103864
Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 423 S-Bahn EMU, carrying the livery of Southern, realised using Train Sim World 2's livery designer.

View attachment 103865
Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 442 'TALENT 2' EMU, carrying the Southeastern blue livery, in TSW2.


I've also done it the other way round

View attachment 103866
Picture of a Class 377 'Electrostar' multiple unit, carrying the Nederlandse Spoorwegen "Sprinter" livery, in TSW2.

Firstly, Very nice renders!

But back to my previous response, even with the british logos, those trains still look "European", whilst the electrostar looks "British", and its more down to the "sides" of the train, reaching bellow the floor level, whilst ont he Electro Star it ends at the floor level., a point that is very aptly shown in your renders. The D-Bahn 423 S-Bahn EMU particularly looks more like a Manchester Tram (with the higher floor).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Brunel's broad-gauge loading gauge was about a foot bigger than Berne gauge in both height and width - the Gauge Commission already decided on how big our railways were going to be ( the cost of converting all ours to Brunel's spec would bave been eye-watering & thats with a smaller network - it's a bit of a pity we didn't try for Irish gauge though ) so not really any point doing it all over with Berne.



The Mk1 was based on older designs too. I think it's probably mostly how curvy & historically, smoother ( at least for steam engines ) our shapes are & now narrow they are below the doors. And the gangways I guess.

There's a random DB coach that doesn't really look much different to ours, other than being inflated. Make it narrower & give it tumblehome, done.

They still had a few in the 90s without autoclosers but with wraparound end doors which had a very Mk2 look to them. But the tall, very square windows give a definite European look - to be fair Mk1s had a similar shape, but they went much lower on the bodyside.

 

[LOL The Irony]

Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 423 S-Bahn EMU, carrying the livery of Southern, realised using Train Sim World 2's livery designer.

That looks like a tram.

Picture of a Deutsche Bahn Baureihe 442 'TALENT 2' EMU, carrying the Southeastern blue livery, in TSW2.


I've also done it the other way round

Picture of a Class 377 'Electrostar' multiple unit, carrying the Nederlandse Spoorwegen "Sprinter" livery, in TSW2.

They still look European and British respectively, proving it isn't just a yellow front that makes something British.

The D-Bahn 423 S-Bahn EMU particularly looks more like a Manchester Tram (with the higher floor).

It looks like that type of thing that would wind up replacing the M5000s in about 20 years.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What I would say look quite British, due to the lower bodyside shape, is the smaller type of coach commonly used by OeBB and SBB, such as the EW I/II:

EW I/II coach in BLS livery, Armin Schwarz

Though only those retrofitted with plug doors (this was done for DOO use). The older manual doors inset from the bodyside look very un-British:

Door area of a model EW I/II, Modellbahn Schweiz

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Do the Swiss (there might have been others) still have electric trains that make their warning sound like a steam engine whistle?
I think we went straight to the car-horn type of warning (two tone) for diesel and electric trains, and didn't pretend they were steam engines.
But we still have a steam engine on some level crossing signs (maybe that's an EU standard).

 

[gg1]

Brunel's broad-gauge loading gauge was about a foot bigger than Berne gauge in both height and width - the Gauge Commission already decided on how big our railways were going to be ( the cost of converting all ours to Brunel's spec would bave been eye-watering & thats with a smaller network - it's a bit of a pity we didn't try for Irish gauge though ) so not really any point doing it all over with Berne.



The Mk1 was based on older designs too. I think it's probably mostly how curvy & historically, smoother ( at least for steam engines ) our shapes are & now narrow they are below the doors. And the gangways I guess.

There's a random DB coach that doesn't really look much different to ours, other than being inflated. Make it narrower & give it tumblehome, done.

It does have a couple of features not generally seen on UK LHCS, the ends being painted a colour other than black and hopper windows (common on multiple units of course but never fitted to any LHCS here), also a very different style of gangway connection.

 

[XAM2175]

But we still have a steam engine on some level crossing signs (maybe that's an EU standard).

No, that's a local choice. The sign used in Germany, Luxembourg, Croatia, and a few other European countries depicts a more-modern train:

(via Wikimedia Commons)


On the topic of British steam locos looking more "streamlined" etc etc, I would like to note that the following design came off a British drawing board and was built in a British workshop

(New South Wales Government Railways AD60 class locomotive, number 6013, of the Beyer-Garratt articulated 4-8-4+4-8-4 design)

 

[61653 HTAFC]

it's a bit of a pity we didn't try for Irish gauge though.

It may not have been the case many years ago, but isn't the Irish loading gauge fairly similar to GB nowadays? It's probably safe to assume that had either Irish or Brunel gauge become the GB standard, the restricted loading gauge would have mostly remained.

Similarly Iberian gauge is quite a bit wider than standard, but the usable space on board generally isn't significantly greater.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do the Swiss (there might have been others) still have electric trains that make their warning sound like a steam engine whistle?

Pretty sure they do, yes. London Underground also does, though you very rarely hear it!

You could also argue that Manchester Metrolink's friendly "toot" sort of is.

 

[Alanko]

Concerning the Union Pacific Big Boys (an enlarged version of the earlier Challenger type), it's their sheer size that always gives me pause, more-so than their looks:

View attachment 103880

I can never warm to American locos at all. They top out a lot of Top Trumps statistics, but there is no finesse in the designs at all; just raw functionality dialled up to twenty. That loco just looks like factory equipment on wheels to me. Designed to cover vast distances pulling vast loads, but tick box engineering.

 

[Pakenhamtrain]

The State Rail Authority of New South Wales took a real shine to that idea too:

(Bill Hough image via RailPictures.net)

One of their successor companies (the Freight Rail Corporation of New South Wales, to be extra precise) then decided in the early '90s that this wasn't quite enough, and so adopted a livery that is comprised only of the loco's number

(Mark Carter image via Flickr.com)


Only because the current Vehicle Numbering rules require it! You should see it on anything that received fleet approval to enter service after 1 Jan 2018.

Stadler however have also put the Vehicle Keeper Marking ("GB-MRE" in this case) on the 777s for Merseyrail, which is above and beyond domestic requirements.

Pacific National kept that tradition alive somewhat with some of thier locos getting big numbers with thier yellow and blue repaints. All have big numbers on the front.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That NSW loco looks very British, quite similar to a 47. The coaches look Indian, though - the small windows do it.

 

[Strathclyder]

I can never warm to American locos at all. They top out a lot of Top Trumps statistics, but there is no finesse in the designs at all; just raw functionality dialled up to twenty. That loco just looks like factory equipment on wheels to me. Designed to cover vast distances pulling vast loads, but tick box engineering.

In the Big Boy's case, this was somewhat deliberate, as they were designed/built to haul massive loads and be as reliable/easy to maintain as possible as you say. I hold the opposite view to yourself in that I can find beauty in functionality, but hey: each to their own.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

That NSW loco looks very British, quite similar to a 47. The coaches look Indian, though - the small windows do it.

Their (NSW Trainlink) modern DMUs could easily be mistaken for 158s inside (and build by ABB/Bombardier in Australia).
But they do feature reversible seating, so nobody needs to ride backwards.
(That's another GB thing - no reversible seating, common outside Europe).
Their XPTs are also only vaguely like our HST vehicles, with locally-built coaches of Budd design (power cars from Derby).
All being replaced by CAF Civity sets over the next few years, built in Spain.

 

[XAM2175]

The coaches look Indian, though - the small windows do it.

For good reason in the days before air-conditioning

Their XPTs are also only vaguely like our HST vehicles, with locally-built coaches of Budd design (power cars from Derby).

Not quite - while Comeng was Budd's Australian licensee, the trailers were of Comeng's own design. The power cars obviously appear quite similar to BREL's efforts, but they were also built by Comeng to a substantially modified design.

 

[Doomotron]

That NSW loco looks very British, quite similar to a 47.

Add some buffers and I think you're onto something. Perhaps it's the big windows that do it?