Spent a bit of time over the weekend thinking about the Blue Pullman HST. I don't dislike it - it's going to make a lot of people very happy, and I applaud it for that - but equally can't help but feel that such an exciting premise deserved a better delivery than what we've seen.

A good livery works best on the train it's designed to carry. Even across a fleet, a consistent-looking livery will be adapted for each train. It's very difficult to just copy/paste your way from one train to another.

The exterior styling of the original Blue Pullman was sleek, with its striking Nanking Blue bodywork accentuated with white banding around windows - and wrapping around the windscreen of the very blunt cab nose. ( Peter Brumby)

16 years on, the Blue Pullman had already been retired and the Inter-City 125 was emerging onto the network. A fast, sleek express passenger train for all was replacing the very select, luxury units of old.

These are two very different trains, and I can't help but feel that the new Blue Pullman HST would've benefited from being treated as such, rather than take an exact copy of the original train's look.

This isn't the answer, but adapting the livery rather than making an exact copy gives opportunity to preserve the personality of the HST whilst carrying the iconic Blue Pullman look, not to mention making doors more accessible to people with visual impairments.

(Yes, charter stock is exempt from PRM regulations, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make these trains as accessible as possible to everyone.)

Anyway, I just needed to get that out of my system. Should probably add that this was a personal project, and is not connected with my work in any way. I really just need to get out more to be honest. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.