The LNER Encyclopedia

Does anybody know the name for the style/font/script/form used for the words BRITISH RAILWAYS painted on many (all????) tenders after nationalisation. In particular on A4 tenders in Experimental Purple.
Many thanks
Graeme Leary
New Zealand

Gill Sans.

[pedant mode]Gill Sans[/pedant mode]

Quite right, erroneous "s" now deleted.

Was Gill Sans used for all regions, or just the former LNER?

No it wasn't used on all regions, at least initially.

Both the Southern and Western Regions painted some locos with 'British Railways' in the script of their respective former companies.

Evidence can be found in 'The Big Four in Colour' by Jenkinson.

John

Yes indeed each of the "New Regions" followed on in the "Style of" the pre-nationalised forebears so ex-LNER works used Gill San lettering/numbering and apple green, ex-Southern "Sunshine" leteering and malachite green, ex-LMS Black/Maroon with LMS style lettering/smokebox numberplates and ex-GW Brunswick green with GW style lettering and cab side brass numberplates. OK Scottish region was new area but the works north of the border followed their counterparts in England either LNER or LMS. Until that is suppliesof pre-nationalised paint ran out and a new corporate livery was developed by the British Transport Commission.

Having just produced this lettering for a model maker I can categorically say that although the style is 'Gill Sans' it does not match any Gill Sans font that is available and I had to draw it up by hand to get the correct weight and letter shapes.

2392 wrote:ex-GW Brunswick green

The Great Western, or British Railways for that matter, never used Brunswick Green. The correct colour is Mid Chrome Green. The SECR though did use Brunswick Green and can be seen on preserved examples.

73D I think the actual font is Gill Sans bold, its definitely Gill Sans but im not 100% sure of the suffix.

I think I am with Richard on this one. The face was a kind of bastard Gill Sans very similar to the Transport face used by LTPB which was also based on Gill Sans, but had subtle differences.

Many thanks for all your replies, as usual, totally in awe of the knowledge about these things you people have.
Graeme Leary

73D wrote:Having just produced this lettering for a model maker I can categorically say that although the style is 'Gill Sans' it does not match any Gill Sans font that is available and I had to draw it up by hand to get the correct weight and letter shapes.

2392 wrote:ex-GW Brunswick green

The Great Western, or British Railways for that matter, never used Brunswick Green. The correct colour is Mid Chrome Green. The SECR though did use Brunswick Green and can be seen on preserved examples.

Definitely agree on it being a 'modified' Gill Sans - not a 'boldface', either.

Re. the GW typeface, I think the closest I've seen to that would be Clarendon. Shouldn't be of too much concern in this forum though, I'd imagine.

The BBC programme from earlier in the year talks about the LNER adopting Gill Sans from 1928
after Dandridge was appointed Advertising Manager.

As with all type faces, there were a number of styles, and a lot depends on whether it was painted or created out of metal sheet, like the stainless lettering on the Coronation A4's. It is also worth remembering that cast plates would depend upon the skill of the pattern maker in terms of the lettering being perfect. They were as skilled as monumental masons in incising, however, carving by hand is an art as much as a skill, so it is not certain that all were created equal. In the same way that painting by skilled signwriters was all different. When I started my apprenticeship all those years ago at Vauxhall, we still had some signwriters of the old school who could produce a straight line for "pinstriping" and pull the brush off and refill it with paint, then put it back on the line, and after wards, you could not see the join, very impressive.

Many carriages had hand painted lettering which is why it is so difficult to for instance get a proper grip on the kind of lettering on GNR locos/carriages and wagons during the various periods.
There used to be old style type setters who knew instinctively how to explain a type face, now sadly there are few who can explain it to us, another great loss. Does anyone have the knowledge of a comparable typeface to GNR standard?

Worth remembering that early ie Sturrock and first Stirling locos were painted an equivalent of GWR green. although some may have called it Hawthorn Green!

Paul

52D wrote:73D I think the actual font is Gill Sans bold, its definitely Gill Sans but im not 100% sure of the suffix.

Gill Sans Bold is the closest, but it needs condensing by around 86%, which distorts the letters and some are still quite different from the 'standard' modern typeface. The lettering would have been specified to be a certain height with each letters 'stem' of a specified width, in this case the letters are of equal thickness all round.

What you have to bare in mind is that although the LNER type style was designed by Eric Gill and was called Gill Sans it differs from the modern typeface we now know as Gill Sans, which becomes apparent when you compare it letter for letter. If you start with the 'A', for example, you quickly notice that the bar of the LNER & BR letter is higher giving a smaller counter.

Also different foundries would often have different 'cuts' for typefaces with the same name, so when matching text you had to check the letter forms to ensure you got the correct one. With moveable type it was also usual for a font to change slightly as it got smaller, so it would not clog with ink.

This obsesion with expecting everything to be in a standard typeface is a recent thing (since the computer?) as anything that wasn't body copy used to be hand drawn and not until the mid/late 60s, when Letraset appeared, were headlines for ads done differently, although lettering artists were/are still used when something different is needed – especially logos. Printer did have display typeface they could use, but the range of sizes available was limiting.

So, as what we are trying to match comes from the days when everything was hand drawn the only way to reproduce it correctly is to bite-the-bullet and draw it by hand!

2512silverfox wrote:I think I am with Richard on this one. The face was a kind of bastard Gill Sans very similar to the Transport face used by LTPB which was also based on Gill Sans, but had subtle differences.

The typeface your thinking of is Johnstone designed by Edward Johnstone and commissioned in 1916 by Frank Pick for the Underground. Working with Edward Jonhstone at this time was a certain Eric Gill, so Gill Sans is in fact based on Johnstone, although as Gill worked on it you can't exactly call it copying!