Talk:Rail Alphabet

Not available

The font is not available at the RSSB web site. --Error 15:56, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Where?

Is there anywhere I can download this font? Lenny 17:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Check this thread

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20822 Pneumaman (talk) 18:13, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Typefaces are often copyrighted. It is likely that this typeface is protected by copyright. If you wish to use the typeface for limited use, such as model railways, the typeface can probably be retrieved from clubs specialising in modelling, they may even have an official copy. This use of the typeface will probably be considered "fair-use". Downloading typefaces from the internet and then using the typeface commercially may be an infraction of the law. 77.167.212.162 (talk) 16:58, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

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Comparison with Helvetica

At the moment, the article states:

"Rail Alphabet is similar, but not identical, to a bold weight of Helvetica."

But then it states nothing about how it isn't identical. Obviously it isn't identical to Helvetica, otherwise it would just be Helvetica. But somebody who doesn't know how to tell them apart is likely to mistake Rail Alphabet for Helvetica. It's hard to compare the sample here with that at Helvetica, because they seem to be at different weights.

As such, we need at least a brief description of how the two fonts differ – be it slightly different proportions, differences in the shapes of specific characters or a combination of the two.

From the sample here, I can see differences in the shapes of the numerals 1, 2 and 7, but that's about it. Maybe if we can get samples of both fonts at the same weight (if they have any weights in common) then we could compare them. I've just discovered Identifont, but it doesn't appear to have the original Rail Alphabet (only New Rail Alphabet).

Is anybody able to get a like-for-like comparison - or otherwise suggest how we can cover this in the article? — Smjg (talk) 23:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Scans of the British Rail Corporate Identity Manual containing the lettering are available. Q and J are shaped differently, Rail Alphabet has slightly shorter ascenders and descenders and is more tightly spaced, but the digits are wider. It wouldn't be difficult to produce an overlay showing differences, but the purity police would remove it. kpschoedel (talk) 21:41, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I keep meaning to come back to this. So it's basically a combination of subtle difference in proportions and different shapes to a few of the characters. But from the link you provided, it's hard to see the difference in ascender/descender height. Does anyone have thoughts about how the information can be best incorporated in the article? I suppose a simple statement would be something like "Rail Alphabet is similar, to a bold weight of Helvetica, albeit with subtly different proportions, tighter letter spacing, and different shapes to characters such as J, Q, 1, 2 and 7". The hard bit is sourcing the subtly different proportions. If only we could find a good like-for-like, side-by-side comparison of the two fonts, it would be easy.... — Smjg (talk) 22:59, 16 September 2017 (UTC)