
I have sent almost my complete project to Megan, my friend and unofficial supervisor. I feel a bit guilty about this because actually there is quite a lot of material for her to look through. In the covering email I observed that the project seemed incongruous in the Covid pervasive climate. We are now in national lockdown again. Logically, train travel has changed over the past few months with far fewer people travelling by rail
So the question is, how do we get people on to trains again? How do we make train travel safe and attractive for the future? I travelled on a Heritage Railway one warm summers day – see previous post. To protect passengers, the Keighly and Worth Valley Railway was only using rolling stock with compartments. This seemed very sensible and was enjoyable for me because I had a compartment to myself. There was a party of six, making the compartment next to mine, full.
Almost all main line services use open, non-compartmentalised coaches which hold more people than older coaches with compartments. I would like to check this though. It is difficult to imagine how future transport can be made safe. A vaccine is imminent but does that mean we HAVE to go back to packed carriages? Can current carriages be compartmentalised, even partially? Can air-conditioning be improved so as to filter and kill viruses? Surely squeezing as many people as possible in to coaches can not be acceptable any more?
The purpose of my project is not examine the interior design of rolling stock but how can typography encourage passengers back on to trains and pave the way for new transport initiatives which are safe and healthy? At present I only have the belief that typography can ease the transition in to a new era of train travel but is that enough? I also believe it is a good place to start.

I have collaborated on a new volume in my series of Typographic Railway Manuals with Paige, an ex-student of mine. We shared the design of images and type and at present I am combining our different approaches. There is no rationale to this apart from wanting to mentor Paige and also see what happens if two different generations of graphic designer tried to work together in lockdown. I’m very hopeful for the result. The image at the top of the post is the first one I put together and the one above is waiting for type.