New national railway clock unveiled, first redesign since BR's 70s design manual

The national railway’s first new clock design in over 50 years has been unveiled, with the first one installed at London Bridge station.

(c) Network Rail

The 1.8 metre wide physical clock at London Bridge will also appear in digital form on departure boards across the network, launching across several other Network Rail-managed stations today, including London Waterloo, London Victoria and London Charing Cross station.

The last national clock design for Britain’s railways was created as part of British Rail’s 1974 design manual, and since privatisation in 1996, the railway has had multiple clocks of many different designs. To create a single unified clock design, Network Rail held a design competition earlier in 2023, and chose the design by WPP brand design agency Design Bridge and Partners.

Selected from over 100 entrants, the winning piece was chosen for its dual functionality as a physical and digital timepiece, while also reflecting the railway’s design and brand history, and, most importantly, making it easy to tell the time in a busy railway station.

Anthony Dewar, Network Rail, commented: “A clock is the first thing people look for when they arrive at a station. The railway is driven by time, being ‘on time’ is our promise to passengers, and clocks have always provided landmarks for people to meet at and use to navigate their way around stations. This design provides a proud and eye-catching centrepiece and acts as a brilliant reminder of the new journey we’re about to undertake together.”

The “Rail Clock” was created with advice from accessibility experts, using easy-to-read numbers in a slightly amended version of the railway’s own typeface, Rail Alphabet 2. The famous railway double arrow logo splits and travels around the rim of the clock every 60 seconds.

(c) Network Rail

Margaret Calvert, designer of Rail Alphabet, and Gerry Barney, creator of the double arrow logo, were consulted in the clock’s creation. The clock will also be made available as an Android smartwatch face in the coming months.

There’s also a really interesting history (yes, really!) of how railways and time itself have evolved together, with a lot of photos of clocks in railway architecture here.

Railway time

Britain’s railway clocks played a major role in the creation of unified time across the country. Prior to the 1830s most cities in the country had their own time zones, most notably Bristol. When the railways tied the country together, there was suddenly a need to create “railway time”.

At first, trains carried “master clocks” that were set in London at the start of their journeys and locked away so they couldn’t be tampered with. At each station on the way out into the country, the stations would set their own clocks by it.

When the telegraph arrived in 1841, it took over the job, and by 1852 electrically controlled clocks had been invented, allowing stations to be hooked directly to Greenwich.

Bristol hung on to its own time alongside “London Time” until Greenwich Mean Time became law in 1880 but the Corn Exchange clock in the city centre still has two-minute hands proudly showing Bristol Time alongside GMT, only 10 minutes slower.