An notable exception to the relaxed rules about yellow fronts is the new stock on Greater Anglia. Due to the large amount of level crossings in that region, it was decided that the yellow fronts should stay regardless of how bright the headlights are.
@@Lolwutfordawin Same in New South Wales Australia where the XPT has a yellow front but also has flashing strobe lights which flash when the air horn is activated and reflector tape pieces down the sides of the whole train and people still drive into the side of the train. If a car driver's attention is taken by looking at a mobile phone they're not going to see the train whatever colour it's painted. Others try to beat the trains over level crossings and get hit and killed by trains even though there are flashing red lights but no boom gate barriers. In Adelaide South Australia they've recently installed cameras on roads that can take photos of drivers using their mobile phone when driving. At present they're only in a few locations and within a month they're reaped over $2M in fines because so many people are under the total control of their phone. A message comes in and they immediately reach for the phone and text back whilst driving. Even hands free isn't safe because you're concentrating on what the person on the phone is saying and not concentrating solely on your driving which on today's crowded roads is more important than ever before.
Only exception I could find within British rail was the Waterloo & City line where the figures it would be unnecessary to have yellow when it’s operating entirely underground
Then there's the red light at the back. Not just a rear warning light. Originally it was to allow signallers to be sure that a train hadn't come apart. If there was no red rear lamp, then a bit of the train was missing, presenting a serious hazard on the line.
When Thailand bought a fleet of Class 158s from BREL, they were supplied in the same livery as their British Rail counterparts, but with the branding in Thai rather than English. They had matching yellow fronts too.
@@BibTheBoulderTheOriginalOne Curious. I think there's an old British Transport Films feature "Driving The Train" from early DMU days that discusses use of the horn at crossings.
@@BibTheBoulderTheOriginalOne considering some of the other strange UK laws about noise restrictions, presumably it was changed because people find the tooting annoying
Here in the states Yellow and Black hazard stripes are often applied to locomotives and cab cars (DVT's to use the UK term) in commuter service. Amtrak has also applied these stripes to cab cars converted from the old Metroliner EMU's. This is for passenger safety at stations and to make the train more visible at road crossings. Trying to beat the train to the crossing is almost a national sport over here. There are engineers over here in double digits when it comes to hitting cars at crossings.
I've often wondered whether, instead of the alternating "ditch lights", it'd be more effective to have lights arranged in a V and cycle through them from bottom to top, creating the effect of "growth" and making the train look like it's approaching faster than it is. But... Florida Man.
@@6yjjk Actually the flashing "ditch lights" seem to be effective. As for Florida Man, well Brightline has been very effective at removing stupid drivers from road crossings. The locomotives they use (as well as Amtrak's) have removable noses that can be quickly replaced after removing stupid car drivers from road crossings. If you search for "Brightline Florida" you'll see lots of videos of this in action.
that isn’t true wt all, the yellow/black are only on a small number of cab cars. several have added stripes to the ends but every system has their own choices of colors and looks for cab cars Boston has NEVER had anything like that even with the newest cab cars purchased: only lights and horns.
You'd be surprised how quiet a steam loco can be when it wants to be. Once many years ago I was half way up an embankment cutting back long grass and shrubs by hand with a long handled bill hook. So just swishes and the odd chopping thud. A quiet rural location with just bird song for company. So imagine my surprise when a large steam loco whistled on the track just below and behind me. It was doing a shunt move and had coasted down a slight gradient to clear some points and the whistle was an acknowledgement to the chap at the ground frame who was throwing the points over. Absolutely silent as far as I could tell. Sure, as soon as it started back over the points it started chuffing again.
I suspect part of the reason for the lack of yellow fronts on trams is that, without exception, they're fitted with both a 'bell' or similar, and a VERY loud horn plus, as they rarely exceed 30kph when sharing roadspace with vehicles/pedestrians, the driver can sound their approach in good time (and drivers are not backwards in sounding off).
Probably also for the fact that they can also stop in a much shorter distance in emergencies, and that they're "usually" in the road and no other vehicle needs a special front either...
The other reason is that trams almost always run on "visual braking distance" rules. meaning: the driver needs to be able to stop within the distance they can see. (if there's another tram or vehicle stopped on the track) Trains on the other hand have signals to take care of that, and their braking distance often exceeds the visibility of the driver.
@@NotAMinifig Yes, Line Of Sight rules - the only signals will usually be at junctions, when they're running on/interacting with non-grade seperated alignments, or when they meet traffic lights (the exception is the Manchester Metrolink, which still has a degree of rail signalling on the Altrincham and Bury lines).
I wouldn't call myself a "train nerd" and I live 250 miles from London so can't say I use the Tube much lol but I find your vids among the most interesting and informative on RU-vid. Thank you.
In the US,a number of traction companies[Streetcar operators],got together to come up with visibility standards! They came up with the,now standard colors,Traction Yellow,Traction Orange,and Traction Red! All bright,high gloss colors! The Traction Yellow is also used on Construction equipment[Caterpillar],and is carried over for fire engines,etc.! Short history,but overlaps British Railways! Forgot,this operation occurred in the 1920's! Thank you 😇 😊!
and then the standard was dropped when it was unnecessary and impractical and utterly useless…and the attempt at standard high visibility for fire trucks was exposed as being a fraud by a psychologist who lied about the findings the only standards actually left are the fire trucks assigned to airports which have slime yellow to set them apart from regular trucks
In the UK in the 1970s British Telecom did research into the best colour to paint its vans so that they would be as clearly visible as possible in all weather and lighting conditions, because they are often stationary on or next to the road while their crews are working on telephone wires. As a result of this research the colour of the vans was changed from olive green to bright yellow. When the government sold British Telecom and turned it into a private company in the mid 1980s the first thing the company did was to repaint all its vans in pale grey.
Steam locos/trains sneaking up on you? Well my live steam model locos are quite quiet and can definitely sneak up on the unsuspecting victim ( they are 7/8” scale, so big and bl@@dy hot at 60psi working pressure), and they only have red buffer beams. Another excellent video from Jago
The KCR Metro-Cammell EMUs used in Hong Kong had yellow fronts too. There was a recent TVB documentary talking about the history of the KCR, the interviewee said it's because all electric trains in Britain were required to have yellow ends at that time, he said the law came about as electric trains are much quieter than diesels. He probably thought so because the KCR EMD diesels the Metro-Cammell EMUs replaced never carried yellow ends. It infuriated me so much when watching... Ok rant over. 🤣
A problem with high intensity lights is that very bright lights on the front of an oncoming vehicle can make it very difficult to judge the speed accurately even in bright sunlight.
From the early 2000s, the Dutch railways abandoned the rule of always making the front of the train yellow, with the livery of the SLT trains being in white and blue. That was carried over to the FLIRT and SNG units of the 2010s. But more recently, they repainted FLIRT and SNG to have a yellow front again, to make them stand out more. So I guess even in this day and age, the yellow is still considered useful.
I think the story was the LEDs on SNGs weren't that bright (which was causing near accidents or something?), so they had drivers put the headlights on full (not full beam) to make them stand out more before they painted the fronts.
IMO, the relaxation of the requirement was a massive downgrade. The yellow fronts on mainline trains are iconic, they're part of the identity of the british rail network! Even if they aren't necessary for visibility any more, they should be kept for branding purposes alone.
It also still works, all Belgian trains have it as a standard livery and so did the Dutch trains. Rules were also relaxed there but a bad accident later they reverted the change. They didn't even wait for repairs to repaint the new SNG units with a yellow front. It still makes a difference so you can more easily see the train from the corner of your eye in full daylight.
@@ordinaryorca9334 Having recently been to the railway museum in Utrecht, you are generally correct, but there are numerous examples of old Dutch trains that don't have yellow fronts. I'm not sure what year the yellow and blue NS livery came in, but before that, they didn't have yellow fronts.
regarding safety etc.: In, I think the 1970's, BR introduced TOPS or Train OPerating System for safety and efficiency. They had, it was said, a backup system in case it went wrong called Back On The Old Manual System.
How funny. Here in Los Angeles it's the opposite. Our older trains didn't have yellow fronts, but ever since the Kinki-Sharyo P3010s rolled out in 2016 with their iconic yellow livery, other trains have started painting their fronts yellow too! Despite the fact that most of our system is light-rail, we have a lot of at grade crossings here, so it makes sense why visibility would be a high priority.
Thank you for the explanation. I'd always assumed the yellow front was for safety and visibility, but then I was confused as to why some trains, like the Grand Central and Trans Pennine trains, didn't have them. Now all is clear.
Thank you for keeping the actual volume level consistent with your voice-over even when demonstrating how trains are loud. The actual fact that you can't hear the speech communicates that quite effectively. I'm not sure if you run these through a compressor with sensible settings, or just balance-match by ear, but you did a good job. It's weird that that's become unusual! But so much TV now is like "make the explosion _actually_ loud! Make the shouting _actually_ loud!" when, like, there's so many other auditory cues to tell us when something is supposed to be loud or quiet. 90s TV had pretty much all the dialogue at the same level regardless of the situation the person was in.
As someone who lives near to pedestrian crossings at grade without signal controls, my jaw dropped when you mentioned that aspect of the need for high visibility. I only calmed down when you reminded us that modern stock have better lights. Phew!
When I was a kid (in the 90s) Polish Railways locomotives had usually yellow front panels. For some reason there were few expections (some painting schemes on EMUs; SM42 shunters were usually green with orange stripes).
Thank you, Jago. Another excellent and informative video. I think it is commendable that when the replica "Blue Pullman" was created, the people concerned then upgraded the headlights to allow the yellow front panel to be left as it should be..all blue. Excellent.
Hey Jago @ 0:58 - Very True - I think that I'd strongly agree with you there - If you can't hear a Steam Loco coming - then there is something wrong with you!!! 😉 Thank you for sharing this interesting info!!! 🙂🚂🚂🚂
It would appear that Jago has a phobia of showing us one of the new Satsumas and derivatives, class 8xx, with their very bright headlights. Thanks Jago for saving us from these bessts. Main line steam locos are carrying high intensity lights in combination with their noise 😊
Plus on a small note, most track workers now have a line blockage to work on the tracks so less needed for yellow fronts. if there's a worker on the track and trains are moving its for emergency work, or are in a position so that the lines can be opened for line traffic.
A good explanation, thank you. I know this off topic a bit, but in the late 1960s early 1970s many municipalities started painting fire trucks/engines/appliances other colours but red. The Home Office did a survey/study and deemed yellow as the most visible colour to the human eye, but everything should be painted traditional red!
An entirely sensible bit of branding. If a giant yellow vehicle came hurtling down the road enough drivers would not know it was a fire appliance to get out of its way. A giant red vehicle would not have the same problem. Everyone in britain has been taught since childhood that fire engines are red.
@@francesconicoletti2547 I agree with you and I understood at the time. Big red fire trucks/engines of my childhood. Before the Home Office rules to keep red, we saw yellows and lime greens being used and for the reason you described it caused confusion. When I got to North America I never understand why police cars and ambulances had red flashing lights. The UK was always blue. Mind sets I guess.
It seems that now, in Canada at least they’ve gone to the British and european standard of both blue and red flashing lights on police and fire vehicles. I’ve seen ambulances also adopting that standard. Before that it was only a single red light or at most two reds.
Some of those newer headlights were absolutely blinding for maintenance workers. If you got landed with being a lookout and one of the freightliner 66's was coming, you had to look away even in bright sunlight at 1 mile or more. Granted you could see them coming and give a warning to the gang, but you also needed retina implants afterwards having had them burnt out by a miniature sun mounted on the front of the loco. As usual in Britain, we went from one extreme to the complete opposite.
@@batman51 It wouldn't matter if they did complain. With the current regime, anything done in the name of safety can't be criticised, however misguided or even wrong it is. I'm glad I retired and don't have to put up with it anymore.
This was something I did wonder about but never felt interested in researching. I just guessed the yellow fronts were for safety purposes (e.g. don't touch the front since you might get hurt) so I was sort of right.
Better a yellow front than a yellow belly, like here in the US. We're afraid of any infrastructure that doesn't directly benefit car and plane companies.
It's great to hear about how small touches make (or made) trains safer for people and as technology improved, the older ways could yield. But "yellow fronts" is a long term: I suggest "y-fronts" as a shorthand. I'm sure that idea isn't pants.
The visibility experiment started, I believe, in early 1960, when “dull green” Brush Type 2 diesel-electric, built in 1957, was painted all over in Golden Ochre, also known by some as Golden Yellow. Being a rather bronzey/mustardey shade, it wasn’t a success and the loco was repainted back to green, albeit with the by-then-mandatory small but much brighter-yellow end panels as shown in your video. It was decided that sister D5578 was, at the same time, to be painted all over in Electric Blue, as chosen for the early (from 1959) Class AL1-AL6 (later 81-86) AC electric locos, but there is some doubt as to whether this was ever actually applied. E&OE.
@@highpath4776I think it was only some Class 52s ( Westerns) that had this livery, class 42s ( Warships ) tended to be green, and 35s ( Hymeks) were generally green with white cab window surrounds.
In just about every other country, the rule is "yo numpty, that there's a train track, if you don't expect a train coming your way you're on your own". Of course the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and possibly others have adopted the practice of honking excessively, effectively teaching people to not have any respect for trains or railroad crossings, because a train will honk at them anyway when it shows up the triangle light arrangement on trains also came about to make it easier to tell the difference between trains and road vehicles
im a bit sad about the yellow panel going i thougt it brought bit of unity to the national network. i hope that more operators choose to keep it in future rather than going for a rather drab grey or black front.
Having grown up in the 60s in a house backing on the Southend line in Brentwood and being totally obsessed with trains, I have vivid memories of the introduction of the panels. First the lower panel then the full frontal. Also thrilling times watching the change from green to blue, with trains commonly half green and half blue.
It’s interesting how the LNER Azumas have kept a part yellow front but other companies with 800’s haven’t, like Lumo and TPE, etc. I liked the large amount of footage from various heritage railway yards. We should have ‘Jago on heritage railway tours’ vidoes.
I remember being a bit disappointed when they dispensed with the yellow front rule, but there you go. One of the units owned by Hastings Diesels currently has just a small area of yellow, reflecting an early example of how the train looked in the sixties.
Person's working on the track should have lookouts. Those person's are not to be distracted. The PTS rule book is quite clear on this. On top of which if you are on the track you should be aware of you surrounding especially if the lineis open to traffic
I have to say (and many don't agree with me), but I don't like UK trains without yellow ends - they don't really look, well, British. And I'm certainly no "little Englander" on such matters. The really weird one for me is Merseyrail's 777s - they're in a yellow livery but they still went for an all-black front. Although I suppose it makes the illuminated "M" show up better.
I thought that the idea behind withdrawing the requirement was that they could then be painted any colour that went with the main livery. I think an inverse Henry Ford rule should have applied - you can have any colour you like as long as it isn't black!
@@Titan604 I certainly think it was motivated by aesthetic desires more than anything else. I don't know what consultations were carried out but I have met trackside workers who reckon the first they knew of it was seeing one go past on site.
Thanks for covering an interesting subject. It pleases me that we have the insect world to thank for the yellow and black hazard warning colours. Wasps and bees use similar stripes to caution us of their stinging ability if provoked, and insects like hoverflies copy the livery to protect themselves in the same way, disguising the fact that they have no stings at all . . .
Thanks for the video. Interestingly as an employee of a railway where most of our trains are white/silver I've had the opposite property where a yellow train blended in coming through a construction site full of yellow builders sand and miscellaneous yellow construction equipment. Wasn't a near miss but wasn't great either
I'm not actually convinced that yellow is more visible than many other colours. For instance, what are the statistics for car accidents - are fewer people hit by yellow cars, than light green of light blue, for instance? Although, of course, fewer people WOULD be hit by yellow cars ((outside of New York) because no one in their right mind drives a yellow car! But I digress. Clearly black and yellow stripes are the way to go. Or am I just being waspish?
It is indeed the case that yellow cars have proportionally fewer accidents. White cars are almost as good, apart from some collisions with snowploughs.
I thought the yellow and black chevrons on shunting and industrial locomotives were referred to as 'wasp stripes' rather than 'Jago.... Err I mean hazzard stripes'. I guess the latter is more 'on message' given the channel name. Also, rather confusingly, loco sheds often had the same 'wasp stripping' on the doors/roller shutters thus making it difficult to spot a shunting locomotive!! 😊
The reason was that about that time British Rail started to introduce reflective signs. They don't work with marker lights of about two candle power so proper high intensity headlights needed to be fitted so that there was enough light for the signs to reflect and actually be seen by the driver.
Another reason for the yellow fronts was that in the 50's and 60's, unlike most other parts of the world, British trains didn't have headlights AT ALL. Drivers had to know the line well and drive trains at night with only the oil lamps from signals to guide them. Yes, they had dim front marker lights to indicate to the signaller which kind of train it was at night (which was later replaced by the famous headcode boxes), but as far as "proper" headlights go, a British train was an unlit dark green square moving at 70 mph. In Germany for example, all trains were mandated to have three headlights for visibility even during the steam era, with similar regulations all over Europe. So I've heard the main reason for the yellow fronts was to save BR lots of money from avoiding to install real headlamps on their entire diesel train fleet, while still improving safety somewhat.
A suggestion for a future video along similar lines, "why British tail lamps flash" as opposed to constantly on. In Ireland we require two constant on, a result of the Cherryville Junction crash of 1983
My favourite use of the yellow front on a train was the Pendolino in its original Virgin Trains livery. I like how they managed to make the yellow a part of the design of the train especially when it swooshes to the roof.
To be honest I actually agree with you about trains that do have yellow ends and those that don’t have yellow ends. It’s how they were built and manufactured and new lighting installed so that drivers can see in the dark whilst driving the train. But still I agree with you.
I've been researching "modern" traction liveries (along with allocations, detail changes and other geek-rich info) for future publication in an online database. Finding out when small yellow panels, then yellow ends, then (sometimes) urgh yellow cabs were added. By 1st Jan 1962 only 14 locos had the yellow panels. D121 was the first to have them painted on, D129 the first to be delivered with them, both in Dec 1961. Electric locos seemed to take longer to have them added than the louder diesels. Class 33s were also stubbornly resistant to yellow paint until the end of the 60s. Of course, being BR, nothing was straight-forward. Western decided to paint their engines Maroon, LMR and Scottish painted most of their AC and a handful of DC locos in a lighter Electric Blue and by 1967 there was a bewildering array of Green with large yellow ends, Blue with small panels, Maroon with none, you get the picture. Some green locos had the new BR logo applied making it difficult to assess from a black and white photo whether what you're looking at was blue, green, black, maroon or beige (yes, that's right "beige"). It took from 1965 until 1980 to eradicate the green livery, the last mainline loco being 40106. Well it was until someone decided to keep it green for railtours and special events. There are many different opinions on whether it was painted blue then back to green or whether it was seen outside Crewe Works with blue undercoat. By the end of the 70's BR had soften its stance on everything looking the same and new liveries were being trialed. A year or so earlier and 40106 wouldn't have been so lucky to gain such celebrity status. Livery information for multiple units is harder to research, mainly because their numbers were less coveted by trainspotters so while there are loads of photos of DMUs and EMUs in the 60s they are rarely noted with anything more than the class type. So I may be some time with this project.
When I a was working on Class 710 stock at Bombardier we were going through the process of justifying the Orange front end and one of the tests we discussed and carried out was to do with the visibility, from the point of view of a driver of another train, of a person in 'full tango' (hi-viz jacket and trousers) walking in front of a 710. At ballast level the Orange panel starts around five feet from the ground so the majority of the person's body is actually seen against a dark background.
The only visible difference between class 08 and 09 shunters is the yellow and black hazard stripes. (Aside from the cab number.) The 09s have a reversed pattern - that is black where the 08 has yellow and yellow where the 08 has black. It's one of those nagging differences. Unless you know, the fronts look different but you cannot immediately see why.
I prefer trains with yellow warning panel as I grew seeing them whether they're old or new, and it's also one of the distinctions for British trains compare to other countries.
Poland and Hungary always used to as well, and CSX in the States. I really do think a train looks incomplete without it, and no one could deny that it catches the eye from a distance.
Irishrail seem to employ/have employed a similar policy with their rolling stock (including suburban trains like the DART, although recent mockups for their replacements don't feature any such yellow panel). Worth noting also that when the LUAS tram launched in 2004 it was almost entirely grey before being forced to add a yellow panel and strip around the entire tram to improve visibility.
Joking aside for a minute, I'm really glad someone with your profile has chosen to discuss this issue. I think moving away from yellow warning panels/ends/stripes is a big step backwards in railway safety. IMO, there is nothing that catches the eye more effectively than these panels. It was a simple, genius idea that has no doubt saved many, many lives.
At the end, that shot of 60103 next to an Azuma is perfect for this video. A loco with a red buffer plate running that isn’t required to have a yellow front because of its age, and a brand new EMU that does have a yellow front, even though it doesn’t need one.
Yellow ends are definitely effective. I would wait at Crowthorne station for a train to Guildford. The line from Wokingham approaches on a mile and a half straight. When a train turns into the approach you see it clearly in the distance as a yellow blob, which slowly grows until you see the whole train.
I grew up with seeing most trains having yellow ends, so I taken it for granted. The only problem now is, when it's dark some lights can be too bright.
Just to add, that BR trains were not required to have headlights until the late 1980s/early 1990s, only marker lights. I believe the reasoning behind this, is that all BR lines had a boundary fence where practicable.
