Greater Anglia has unveiled a special train livery to celebrate Pride and the LGBT+ community. The livery, which has been applied to an Alstom-built ‘class 720’ commuter train (number 720506), includes both the Pride and transgender flags adjacent to the driver’s cab, on both ends and sides of the five-carriage train.
The Pride livery was applied to a class 720 commuter train. (c) Greater Anglia
The train will be seen mainly between London Liverpool Street and Cambridge, between London Liverpool Street and Clacton, Harwich and Ipswich, but also occasionally across the rest of the network.
Launched at a special ceremony at London Liverpool Street station, it also includes the word ‘Pride’, applied beneath the windows of the first and last carriages, in colours supporting the progress flag and representing visibility for marginalised LGBT+ people, as well as the wider values of diversity and inclusion.
The special livery, which was the idea of Lee Shaw, a train service manager at Greater Anglia, and applied at the company’s Ilford depot, will now provide a year-round reminder of GA’s overall commitment to diversity and inclusion, and more specifically to LGBT+ staff and customers across its network.
Jamie Burles, Greater Anglia’s managing director, said: “Many of our colleagues at Greater Anglia are members of the LGBT+ community, along with many of our customers too.
“It’s important we show that they and everyone else is welcome on the railway, right across all the many destinations we serve on the GA network.
“We’re pleased to celebrate our continuing commitment to diversity, inclusion and, in particular our LGBT+ colleagues and customers, with this livery showing that Pride is all year round.
“Suggested and developed by GA colleagues, it’s a really positive and very visible initiative, on a train which will operate on many of our routes, helping to embed and symbolise our ongoing work to make Greater Anglia a welcoming place for all.”
Most of the national train companies have committed one train out of their fleet to being a Trainbow, so there are about a dozen trainbows, out of the just over 15,000 trains in use in the UK.
Nice to see easy but visible gestures like these on the network, and thank you for sharing it!
No one who is truly confident in their own sexuality would be threatened by (or probably even notice) these 10 out of 15,000(!) trains. But there will always be some triggered people who get confused and angry because they don’t understand. The world is not quite what they expected and they are frightened. Iexpect a few of them will comment but thank you for reporting on these Pride liveries!
I think the train looks fabulous! I’m all for visibility and inclusion.
It’s a celebration of all LGBTQ+. No need for Bea in a bonnet 🙂