On Jan 28, 6:50*am, Mizter T wrote:
On 28 Jan, 13:22, Graeme Wall wrote:





In message
* * * * * Stephen Furley wrote:

On 28 Jan, 12:35, Brian Robertson wrote:
What is the history of the totem station name signs? Were they purely a
BR design? Were they first introduced straight after nationalisation?
Were they an adaptation of an existing design (As in the LNER brakevan
becoming the BR standard).

The shape was pure BR, but the idea of the name on a bar passing
through some sort of shape was used previously by a number of
railways, the SR targets are probably the closest to the BR totems,
but there are also the LT roundel signs, and at least one railway had
diamond shaped ones, but I cannot remember who.

LT again, before the roundels. *Actually, strictly speaking I think it was
only the Metropolitan, not LT as a whole. *The roundel was adopted about
1908.

There was no LT before the roundel. The roundel first appeared in
1908, when the various underground railway companies agreed to use the
term Underground, the 'UndergrounD' logotype and also use a bar and
circle device for station name boards. That's all the underground
railway companies apart from the Metropolitan Railway, who decided to
go their own way in 1914 with the diamond device.

The LT Museum has a section that deals with the history of the roundel
he
http://www.ltmcollection.org/roundel/about/detailedhistory.html

Note that the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) had introduced a
'winged wheel' device as their logo in 1905. In 1912 the Underground
Electric Railways Company of London Limited (UERL) - also known as the
Underground Group - purchased LGOC.

The roundel in use on the Underground was developed further in the
1910s, resulting in the familiar roundel incorporating the UndergrounD
logotype in the centre bar. This design of roundel then started to
appear on publicity, station nameboards and the exterior of stations.

Separate versions of the roundel were then developed for other
constituent companies in the Underground Group - of particular note is
the LGOC roundel, with the 'GeneraL' logotype in the centre bar. In a
senase this was mirrored by what happened in 2003 when TfL had a big
graphic redesign and started using different roundel designs for all
its constituent parts - Streets, DLR, London Rail etc.

AIUI the separate diamond device as used on the Metropolitan was
phased out when the Metropolitan Railway - along with the Underground
Group and other bus companies and tram operations in the London area -
became part of the new London Passenger Transport Board, which quickly
adopted the trading name of 'London Transport'.

Anyway the section on the LT Museum website is well worth a look, it
goes into it all in a lot more detail.

Thank you. I think I have read all this before. One has never seen
it put so succinctly. You have summarized the roundel's history very
well. I am cross posting this to enable it to reach a wider audience.