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I feel they should to modify some elements with said livery on coaches.
  • Change the color of the fleet number. Having white letters on a florescent lime green background is not a visually smart approach; it needs to be a contrast so you can actually see the decals.
  • Bring back the fleet number's position in place of the current Metrolinx logo.
  • Move said MX logo elsewhere. Only because exec's will want it on no matter what, I'm sure..
  • Replace that logo to their updated version they decided to change at some point.
I mean, they probably won't, but..
 
TDE said:
I feel they should to modify some elements with said livery on coaches.
  • Change the color of the fleet number. Having white letters on a florescent lime green background is not a visually smart approach; it needs to be a contrast so you can actually see the decals.
  • Bring back the fleet number's position in place of the current Metrolinx logo.
  • Move said MX logo elsewhere. Only because exec's will want it on no matter what, I'm sure..
  • Replace that logo to their updated version they decided to change at some point.
I mean, they probably won't, but..
Click to expand...
Why exactly do we need B end numbers? Black numbers were originally tested but they went with white, which makes me assume everyone found white to be just as easy to read.
I agree with updating the Metrolinx logo to the new one on repainted coaches going forward.
 
Other than railfans, does anybody outside of fleet operations really care about the visibility, placement or colour of fleet numbers? I get the need for an attractive livery, most organizations concern themselves with their 'corporate image' to varying degrees, but does anybody think ridership would change if the fleet was, say, all white?
 
lenaitch said:
but does anybody think ridership would change if the fleet was, say, all white?
Click to expand...
This, right here, hits at the key part of the argument, I think.

I think that the obsession with branding is very much a product of the times we are living in, with the influencers and shortened attention spans and all that. From 1921 until the introduction of the CLRV livery, the TTC used a crimson and cream livery which was hardly original, it feels like a ton of operators used those colours at some point or other including British Rail in the form of their "blood and custard" coaching stock livery, and no one cared. British Rail hardly had a unified corporate identity, either - many locomotives wore a variety of paint schemes throughout their lives, be they steam or diesel. Wikipedia has a not extremely exhaustive selection of liveries that they experimented with over the years, and of course, it goes without saying that the whole fleet wasn't repainted every time a new idea came up, so the fleet could be extremely varied in colours at times. I guess back then, people focused on real issues.

en.wikipedia.org

British Rail corporate liveries - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

For a more recent example, decades following the fall of communism, Prague has had a multi coloured fleet according to the type of vehicle, with a corporate livery, as such, being introduced only in the last couple of years. It didn't seem to slow ridership up in any appreciable way. I shudder to think that there are people out there who decide whether to ride transit based on the colours the fleet is painted in - I really hope that's just a strawman that the influencers among us have concocted out of thin air!

T3 high floor:

36021515356_6106eefbbe_b.jpg


T3 low floor:

36119651360_1a2561a2b3_b.jpg


T6A5:

36515984855_308aa11075_b.jpg


Skoda 14 T:

9606758381_a8e7c56c4f_b.jpg


Skoda 15 T (old livery):

35894995292_ee0492589d_b.jpg


Skoda 15 T (new livery):

35494653920_83bfd2f6a9_b.jpg


Culminating in the new corporate livery, introduced in 2020.

https://flic.kr/p/2nRde1R

All photos are mine except for the last one, with credit going to Daniel Pánek on Flickr.

I have never been convinced of the need for a new GO livery, and the fact that they're pushing to repaint everything now whether it is in need of repainting or not feels like an extremely poor use of funds to me.
 
lenaitch said:
Other than railfans, does anybody outside of fleet operations really care about the visibility, placement or colour of fleet numbers? I get the need for an attractive livery, most organizations concern themselves with their 'corporate image' to varying degrees, but does anybody think ridership would change if the fleet was, say, all white?
Click to expand...

Shop forces and yardpeople need to be able to find the numbers without walking half the length of the car, or having to wait until the car has rolled all the way by them.

For that reason, I’m surprised that the numbers aren’t on both ends of the car, as they were with the old green scheme..

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
Shop forces and yardpeople need to be able to find the numbers without walking half the length of the car, or having to wait until the car has rolled all the way by them.

For that reason, I’m surprised that the numbers aren’t on both ends of the car, as they were with the old green scheme..

- Paul
Click to expand...
Geez are we seriously going to waste pages and time to debate something so trivial that honestly doesn't matter at all to 99.99%? If anything the only ones qualified to comment on the merits of where a sticker is placed are the yards people themselves. If there are any issues with the numbers they would've changed it a long time ago.
 
GO tested black and b-end numbers back when the Series 10 coaches were new, both aren’t used anymore so I think it’s safe to say that both aren’t necessary:

:
5AF13BC0-D380-494F-86E9-B805B6CBBBCC.jpeg
74BDA144-CE38-47A7-B1F9-BBA0ED3623DC.jpeg
 
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cplchanb said:
Geez are we seriously going to waste pages and time to debate something so trivial that honestly doesn't matter at all to 99.99%? If anything the only ones qualified to comment on the merits of where a sticker is placed are the yards people themselves. If there are any issues with the numbers they would've changed it a long time ago.
Click to expand...

I’m just cynical enough about ML (and not without good reason) to wonder whether the operations and maintenance arm knew exactly where they wanted the numbering - as those early efforts suggest - but the art and style design gods at corporate had other ideas. (Operability? Pffft…..we’re creating world class graphic design here….)

One of the craft skills that railroaders develop (and this is the sort of thing that separates the railroader from the railfan wannabe) is figuring out how to do their job with the minimum walked distance. A novice railroad yard worker will walk miles extra in a day until they figure out the most efficient way to get the job done.

If you are a Willowbrook mechanic whose job assignment is to correct a hvac defect in car xxxx, which is somewhere in a trainset in track Y, finding said car without walking the entire train length is worth a little paint. Labelling the A end is helpful too, even though there are conventions and ways to figure that out.

- Paul
 
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