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National Rail

National Rail is a brand name of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). ATOC is an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train companies of Great Britain which now run the passenger services previously provided by British Railways (BR) (latterly trading as British Rail), a statutory corporation which has since been abolished. It thus generally does not include services that do not have a BR background; this distinction is important, because National Rail services share a ticketing structure and ticket inter-availability that do not necessarily extend to other services.

National Rail and Network Rail

National Rail should not be confused with Network Rail. National Rail is a brand used to promote passenger railway services, while Network Rail is the organisation owning and managing the fixed assets (tracks, signals etc.) of the railway network.

The two networks are generally coincident where passenger services are run. Most Network Rail lines also carry freight traffic and some lines are freight only. Some scheduled passenger services running on Network Rail lines, for example Heathrow Express, the Tyne and Wear Metro and small parts of the London Underground, are not part of the National Rail network. Conversely, some National Rail services run on track not part of the Network Rail network, for example on London Underground track.

Train operating companies

24 privately owned Train Operating Companies (TOCs) operate trains on the UK rail network. The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) provides a common voice for the TOCs and some degree of central coordination: the provision, for example, of a national timetable, journey planner, and enquiry service.

Design and marketing

Since the privatisation of British Rail there is no longer a single approach to design on railways in Great Britain (GB). The look and feel of signage, liveries and marketing material is largely the preserve of the individual companies operating trains and stations.

However, National Rail continues to make use of British Rail's famous double-arrow logo designed by Gerald Burney of Design Research Unit (DRU); it has been incorporated to some degree into the National Rail brand, being displayed on tickets, the National Rail website and some postering. The intellectual rights to the logo remain public property, being vested in the Secretary of State responsible for railway transport.

Use of the logo has more to do with convenience than design; changing it would have made obsolete all the road signs using it to indicate railway services since 1969. Individual operators would also have had no more right than any other private company for their "advertisement" to appear on traffic signs whereas the double arrow (and/or the LU symbol or a PTE symbol if appropriate) was already a prescribed symbol for indicating a "railway station" .

Newer stations do not always display the logo, but in general the BR logo is still very much associated with rail travel in GB, and used in multiple contexts to denote it.

The typeface used in National Rail marketing is referred to in the National Rail Corporate Identity Style Guidelines as 'Logotype'. It is a specially designed font, which resembles bolded Comic Sans. Most of the train operating companies themselves continue to use British Rail's Rail Alphabet typeface to varying degrees in station signage, timetables and other promotional literature, although its use is no longer universal - however it remains a compulsory standard by law for safety signage on trackside areas and on rolling stock.

Although the companies which comprise ATOC technically compete against each other, the strapline which National Rail uses to accompany their logo is 'Britain's train companies working together'.

Other GB passenger rail operators

Several GB conurbations have their own metro or tram systems, most of which are not part of the National Rail network. These include the London Underground, Docklands Light Railway, Blackpool Tramway, Tramlink, Glasgow Subway, Tyne and Wear Metro, Manchester Metrolink, Sheffield Supertram, Midland Metro and Nottingham Express Transit. On the other hand, the largely self-contained Merseyrail system is part of the National Rail network, and local rail schemes around Cardiff, Glasgow and West Yorkshire consist entirely of National Rail services. London Overground is also part of the National Rail system.

Two recently inaugurated passenger services, Heathrow Express and Eurostar, are also not part of the National Rail network despite some sharing of stations and routes. In addition, Northern Ireland Railways was never part of British Rail, and thus is not part of the National Rail network.

There are a significant number of privately owned or heritage railways, listed in the list of British heritage and private railways, which are not part of the National Rail network and mostly do not operate public railway services.

Ticketing

National Rail services have a common ticketing structure inherited from British Rail. Through tickets are available between any pair of stations on the network, and can be bought from any station ticket office. Most tickets are inter-available between the services of all operators on routes appropriate to the journey being made. A notable exception is for journeys between London and Gatwick Airport, for which, as of March 2006, three operators issue different tickets valid on their own services only. There is also a London-Gatwick ticket that is valid on all operators except Gatwick Express. Operators on some other routes offer operator-specific tickets that are cheaper than the inter-available ones.

Through tickets involving the services of Heathrow Express and London Underground are also available. Oyster pay as you go can only be used on a limited number of National Rail services in Greater London, although ATOC has made a commitment to eventually accept the ticketing product on all routes within the London fare zones.

Passengers without a valid ticket boarding a train at a station where ticket-buying facilities are available are required to pay the full Open Single or Return fare. On some services penalty fares apply - a ticketless passenger may be charged the greater of £20 or twice the full single fare to the next stop. Penalty Fares can be collected only by authorised Revenue Protection Inspectors, not by ordinary Guards.

National Rail distributes a number of the technical manuals on which travel on the UK railways is based, such as the National Rail Conditions of Carriage, via their website.

Timetables

Pocket timetables for individual routes are available free at many railway stations. A complete National Rail Timetable, with up to 3000 pages, was also available for purchase however the final edition was published in May 2007. Complete timetables are still available in printed form from an independent publisher.

An online version of the old printed timetable and journey planner is accessible via National Rail's website (and the "printed" timetable with its maps at Network Rail's website) which includes the facility to book tickets online. The website also provide real-time information about running of services in selected routes.