Network SouthEast 40

40 years ago today, on 10th June 1986, Network SouthEast was launched. This was a bold attempt to rebrand the British Rail network around London, a vast area stretching from Exeter to King's Lynn and covering over 900 stations. Its logo was three chevrons in red, blue and grey and they cropped up everywhere from station signs to trains and timetables, also the maps designed to tempt passengers out onto the railways. The brand remains much loved despite lasting only eight years, ending prematurely in 1994 when the Conservative government privatised the railways and split NSE into eleven franchises. But a few fragments survive if you know where to look, so I've been out across London to see how many different types of remnant I could find. These are the platforms at Barking. Several of the signs are still NSE originals in white and blue, especially the numbers denoting platforms 1 to 8. The logos underneath are generally faded and/or scraped off, but some like platform 6 remain mostly…