August 3, 2021 Reanne Duffy

Milton Keynes based Charles Rayner Ltd. partners up with MetaWrap MD-X to brand a train that nothing less than revolutionary…

 

In order to be able to claim a specialisation in rail sector graphics, you have first to wrap your head around the paradox that you’ll be ‘specialising,’ in practically ‘everything’ the sign and allied industries are together capable of designing, producing and installing.

 

Your disciplines will include exterior and interior vehicle livery involving branding and wrapping. You’ll be adept at making interior and exterior labelling using a huge range of materials and for applications in statutory roles as well as those that direct, advertise and inform. You’ll be working with pristine, virgin vehicles and stock. You’ll be undertaking refurbishments. Someone may ask for toilet wraps and you’ll be expected to say ‘yes.’ Glass protection measures need to be in your repertoire and general signage used at stations and depots upon all manner of rail and retail infrastructure will be in your toolbox too.

 

Few companies ‘specialise’ to anything like the extent the rail industry requires in order to consider a signs and graphics producer supplier one if its own. Some do though. Among them, is Milton Keynes based Charles Rayner Ltd. The company knows how to get ink on a dazzling range of substrates through the screen process and it has been around since the advent of digital printing and is a fully equipped digital wide-format printer too. Finding in depth competencies in both print technologies is not an easy thing to do and it distinguishes Charles Rayner powerfully from the signs and graphics industry in general. Charles Rayner’s team also knows rail and the network knows Charles Rayner.

 

If you travel by train, its a practical certainty that you’ll have seen evidence of the work the Charles Rayner team has supplied the rail sector. Given the headline-grabbing work the rail industry is itself doing to decarbonise operations and take the sector into a new age, seeing Charles Rayner’s work seems all the more likely still. Among the most recent examples, Charles Rayner’s livery work for Chiltern Rail, the rail franchise operator, and Porterbrook who supply it with trains, in wrapping its latest 168 unit, a small, two-unit train popular on regional networks. 

 

There’s nothing much new about a 168, or at least 168s in general. The one that Charles Rayner’s team got to grips with though was a bit different. The result of visionary and pioneering development actioned in pursuit of Porterbrook’s environmental mission, the HybridFLEX 168 represents a notable advance for the rail industry and for the planet whose citizens it transports. The HybridFLEX features a new, retrofitted Rolls Royce MTU hybrid power plant. The first of its type. 

 

Equipped with its MTU power plant, the novel reinvention of the 168 switches seamlessly between conventional power and battery. By doing so, it keeps operational noise and emission elements away from stations, town centres and other populated areas. Modelling suggests that improved acceleration profiles can shave time off most routes the 168 operates while delivering fuelling savings of 20%. That’s a revolution in the making.

 

There’s a lot of serviceable 168-like units on the UK’s rails that now have a very viable future thanks to Porterbrook’s innovation and the fact it can be retrofitted to older stock. Routes that are still years away from electrification can begin to make progress toward improved environmental credentials, and Porterbrook’s brilliant vision for rail can be delivered through operators like Chiltern Rail.

 

Charles Rayner has been providing graphics and livery to Chiltern Rail for many years and that relationship prompted Porterbrook to pick up the phone purely, at that stage, to commission some basic labelling for the HybridFLEX ahead of its handover to the operator. The conversation got rolling pretty quickly and it wasn’t long before a train wrap befitting the revolutionary stature of the project was on the table and, shortly after that, a design was delivered to the team at Charles Rayner.

 

The team applied its skills in handling train wraps to the supplied design and turned it into a manageable project. They elected to use MetaWrap MD-X for the wrap’s production and this was laminated using MetaGuard 850RW having first printed the wrap on an Epson printer. MetaWrap MD-X is a flagship material in Metamark’s MD-Class digital materials portfolio, and it’s valued for its elongation tolerance and compliance with modern ink species. The chosen laminate MG-850RW provides elevated optical continuity with the subject it protects so making colours really ‘pop.’ It present a durable and largely inert face to the world making it perfect for imparting extreme durability to hard-working graphics used in demanding application in the rail sector.

 

The Charles Rayner team’s experience anticipated any and all eventualities in terms of wrapping and application challenges and the net result of this is a head-turning wrap that distinguishes the prototype 168 HybridFLEX from any the. It succeeds in softening the lines of the train and makes it look like the cutting-edge hardware it is. Physical application is perfect. The result a big testament to the skills Charles Rayner offers the rail industry.

 

Porterbrook’s mission continues at pace. The HybridFLEX development is but on step on the road to the enterprise delivering on its mission to improve the rail sector’s environmental credentials. Among other developments slated is the HydroFLEX, a further development that will take conventional fuels out of the equation where it meets the rails and replace it with hydrogen gas. It’s as good as is sounds.

 

The rail sector has a lot to say and train livery is one element of the mix that gets the message in among rail users in a spectacular way. Charles Rayner stands ready to play its part. It is, after all, a ‘specialisation’ is does particularly well.