Ferret and Dartboard

A recent railway-themed letter to the Telegraph was drawn to my attention by a friend. The writer recounted how in the 1950s the Garter King of Arms had “an apoplectic fit” on discovering that the lion emblem on a locomotive’s tender had been turned round to face the right so that it faced the front of the locomotive. Unsurprisingly, he knew better than anyone that according to convention heraldic lions always faced left. The revelation presumably left those responsible at British Railways red-faced until they were able to phase out the offending articles and replace them with the correct version. As the contributor to the letters page reminded us, “these things need to be right”.

Blissfully unaware of the issue, myself, I thought the least I could do was get up to speed on BR’s lion emblems, even if I was over 60 years too late for it to have ever spoilt an otherwise enjoyable day out on the trains for me, personally.

The first “lion on wheel” emblem adopted for use on BR locomotives is attributed to the celebrated poster designer, Abram Games [though that is open to conjecture, apparently, as explained on the website thebeautyoftransport.com]

As it was an emblem/seal/totem/logo/crest and not officially heraldic, BR were free to have the lion facing the front of the loco on each side without infringing etiquette [or endangering the health of an unsuspecting Garter of Arms]. A replacement design was eventually introduced, also incorporating a lion and wheel, that was based on the British Transport Commission’s own coat of arms, which had been registered with the College of Arms in 1956.  However, BR continued its previous practice of having the lion facing the front on the right-hand side of the tender, and in doing so they infringed the terms of the registered design. After this faux pas had been pointed out to them, they phased out the offending version and after 1959 they followed the accepted practice. The new design was irreverently described as “the ferret and dartboard”, though what the Garter of Arms thought about that is not recorded.     

The replacement design became an instantly recognisable part of our formative years, even though I can hardly have claimed to have studied it closely at any stage. It is important to get it right, not because all convention must always be followed rigidly to satisfy the obsessions of people in high places, but because every artistic design is someone’s creation, even where it represents a large corporate body, and they deserve to have the integrity of their work upheld.