DISFIGURED RAILWAY STATIONS SIR,—In _ suggesting that the scheme of
orderly layout of signs and advertisements at London Transport stations could well be carried out by the other railways, Mr. Noel Carrington overlooks what had already been achieved in this direction before the war at stations that had been rebuilt or partially rebuilt ; to quote at random: Shenfield of the L.N.E.R., Leeds (City) of the L.M.S. and L.N.E.R., Leamington Spa of the G.W.R. and Surbiton of the Southern.
He also cannot be aware of the vast amount of tidying-up that was accomplished or in hand some years before the outbreak of wAr. On the L.N.E.R. a five-year plan of station improvement initiated by Sir Charles- Newton, the present chief general manager, was in full swing. This five-year plan was being fulfilled by a number of station improvement committees of experts from the various commercial, operating and technical departments, whose job it was to inspect the large number of stations earmarked annually for repainting and renovation, to recommend what other improvements could be carried out concurrently with this work. Their recommendations, which were almost invariably adopted, included the standardisation and resiting of direction and other signs (for which Gill Sans lettering and - uniform colours had already been devised), the
grouping of and provision Of panelled sites for both railway and com- mercial advertisements, and the grouping and, where necessary, modernisa- tion of automatic machines. In the case of commercial advertising a serious difficulty was presented by the masses of different shapes and sizes of enamelled iron plates—a legacy of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. But eventually it was laid down that future plate advertisers must adopt poster sizes' (i.e., double crown or multiples thereof) for their advertise- ments and several existing plate advertisers were persuaded to convert from miscellaneous size to poster size, thereby securing excellent sites on the new panelled boards that were being provided.
. This tidying-up process had been carried out in various degrees at some 600 L.N.E.R. stations up to the outbreak of war, and it will be resumed when peace returns. The result so far has been to increa'se rather than diminish revenue from commercial advertisements, and in this connexion Mr. Carrington's closing remarks are correct.—Yours faithfully, GEORGE Dow. The Press Relations Officer, London and North-Eastern Railway, H.Q. 1 (via Hitchin).
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