New Rail Alphabet Font Free
Jenniffer Trotter
Key elements of the rebranding were still being used during much of the 1980s and Rail Alphabet was also used as part of the livery of Sealink ships until that company's privatisation in the late 1980s. However, by the end of the 1980s, British Rail's various business units were developing their own individual brands and identities with use of Rail Alphabet declining as a consequence.[8] The typeface remained in near-universal use for signs at railway stations but began to be replaced with alternatives in other areas, such as in InterCity's 1989 Mark 4 passenger carriages which made use of Frutiger for much of their interior signage.
The privatisation of British Rail from 1994 accelerated the decline in use of the typeface on the railway network with most of the privatised train operating companies who now manage individual stations choosing to use the typefaces associated with their own corporate identities for station signs and publicity. More recently, the custom Brunel typeface introduced by Railtrack for signs at major stations and adapted by Network Rail as NR Brunel was recommended as a new national standard for station signs by a 2009 report commissioned by the Secretary of State for Transport,[9] and was used extensively by South West Trains and East Midlands Trains. Meanwhile, Helvetica Medium has replaced Rail Alphabet as the industry's preferred typeface for safety notices within passenger trains due to the ready availability of the former and for consistency with British Standards on general safety signs.[10]
Some train operators continued use of Rail Alphabet long into the privatisation era. Arriva Trains Wales[11] used the typeface until the end of the franchise in 2018, with First Great Western also making extensive use of Rail Alphabet for signage until the firm's rebranding to Great Western Railway in 2015. Merseyrail[12] continues to use the typeface for station signage.
In May 2021, as part of the Williams Rail Review, it was announced that the new government body Great British Railways (GBR) will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 on the rail network, replacing the many different typefaces used on railway signage since privatisation.[2]
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.
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.
Please could you provide, under FOIA, a copy of the font files for the 'Rail Alphabet 2' typeface, which formed part of the subject matter of your Shapps-Williams Rail Plan. These should be provided in their original format (eg TTF, OTF...)
The exhibition tells the design story behind the railways from the 1960s to the launch of Rail Alphabet 2. You can also learn more about wayfinding as a design field and how new systems are designed to create a safer and more inclusive travel environment.
Explore the creative processes that led to the Rail Alphabet typeface and see how rail signage, printed materials and station architecture have changed for the present day. It includes a bespoke suite of pictograms for our new wayfinding system designed by design studio Spaceagency using the new Rail Alphabet 2 typeface.
The exhibition forms part of a wider initiative, led by our Buildings and Architecture team, to deliver a safe and reliable railway through good and sustainable design. This opportunity to work with experts in wayfinding and typeface design will allow us to reach the wider design community and broaden our approach to quality design.
Chair of Network Rail Peter Hendy said the company, which is the owner and infrastructure manager of most of Great Britain's railway network, wanted a clean and consistent design to improve journeys and stations.
A lasting legacy
The work done by Kinneir and Calvert on Rail Alphabet was hailed as something of a triumph and was duly coveted by a number of other transport companies from as far afield as Japan. So successful was the typeface that it was subsequently adopted by a number of state railway companies, notably DSB in Denmark. Kinneir and Calvert were soon carrying out signage work for the Department of Health and Social Security (for the National Health Service) and the Minstry of Defence for the country's hospital and military signage systems respectively, where the typeface was again chosen for its many proven virtues of functionality.
Nowadays, one or two train operating companies doggedly retain Rail Alphabet in recognition of its outstanding suitability as a public wayfinding typeface. The Rail Safety and Standards Board still specify the font for a number of types of lineside signs. There is also a dwindling number of 'legacy' signs across the national railway network that will no doubt continue to disappear over the course of time as they are replaced with altogether blander and less effective alternatives.
Kinneir Calvert signed the motorways and roads with their Transport alphabet (see Eye no. 34 vol. 9). Rail Alphabet was drawn to be read in a slower, pedestrian context: signs for NHS hospitals and airports and rail stations. The original Rail Alphabet was produced purely for signing, and later adopted by DSB, the Danish railway corporation, where it was used until 1997.
I should also have added that these alphabet posters are of historical significance since they show a prototype spacing method that was never used since both Rail Alphabet (Bristish Rail for railway signage) and Transport (Ministry of Transport for traffic signs) used tiling systems which would prove to be a lot easier to use than the method that Kinneir was trying to explain on the bottom of these posters.
In the spirit of trying to avoid wasting ink and paper trying different sizes, please can anybody point me to the actual letter sizes used for the station name on running in boards and name signs attached to platform lamps, and, for the typical "Way Out", "Buffet", "Telephones" etc direction signs used on stations. I've found plenty of info about the alphabet font itself but can't seem to find anything on the actual letter sizes in typical station sign applications.
The question remains as to whether Scotrail and Transport for Wales branding will have to include this or whether the plan at the Department for Transport is to have one branding across the UK. (Transport is a devolved matter in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.)
I am working on making my own decals, and I was was wondering if there was a previous thread with a list of microsoft word fonts or full list that closly resemble railroad fonts (Roman, Gothic, Nickel Plate Rd. style font, etc). Thanks for any help in advance.
LION models New York City Transit (NYCT) and sure enough somebody came through with the INDEPENDENT font. Of course, NYCT has not used that font in 50 years, but I still like it and will continue to use it. After all, who is to say what era my trains are really running in, but it does seem to be correct for the equipment and period that I am running.
I had a virus nightmare a while back trying to download a font. It used to be that I could find one and just download it. Now, most of the links for free fonts have some sort of "installer" program that installs viruses and adware instead. Be careful and make sure your anti-virus software is up to date.
You probably don't need the full alphabet, so you could probably make your own letters in Inkscape. If you can find a hi-res image of the logo or lettering you're doing, load that into Inkscape as a reference image. Use reference lines or the grid feature to keep everything a uniform height.
gmpullmanI purchased several railroad fonts from this site and used Corel DRAW to finalize the artwork. This was several years ago so I don't have any recent dealings with the seller but I am satisfied with the quality of the work.
Railfonts has a good rep and been around since I first got on a computer in the mid-90s. I've never used them, but I'll second Ed's endorsement if you need a real font and not something that's just close. I've known and heard of satisfied customers over the years.
There are several sites that allow you to download FREE railroad roman and railroad roman extended (stretched out) types, among others. Google in "Free railroad roman font" and they should show up. Save them to your desktop first. Some may be zipped files that will self extract when you drag the zipped icon to your font master file.
Other fonts I have found for free- a very close analog to the Great Northern empire font (see my Cedarwood models in the Photo Gallery) and various "streamline" or "streamlined" fonts. I used something like that on my TOFC white Great Northern trailer car (photo gallery).
Often, changing the "aspect" of a particular font will render it virtually identical to one you may want to use. In addition, at HO scale, some "analog fonts"- which have very slight differences in structure and shape comapred to the real thing-are microscopic at fonts sizes below 14 (MS Word).
Actually, you have a good point about internet searches in this regard, but there are a number of regular reputable (validated by my security software) free font sites which I visit when looking for a particular style. Having said that, anti-malware software (Anti-Malware Bytes) combined with a robust internet security antivirus software that screens while you are on-line (I use Ad-Aware antivirus) is a critical idea.
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