Industry mourns designer of InterCity 125s

Sir Kenneth Grange, who designed the appearance of British Rail’s first High Speed Trains in the 1970s, has died just four days after his 95th birthday. The novel appearance of the InterCity 125 power cars quickly became a symbol of British Rail’s increasingly successful InterCity business, after the first had entered public service on the Western Region main line in October 1976. Sir Kenneth, whose industrial designs spanned a wide range of objects, including the Kenwood Chef food mixer and the Anglepoise lamp, had been commissioned to design the InterCity 125 livery, but he decided to redesign the appearance of the power car without telling British Rail.