Sorry to be boring but you’ll notice two of the diagonal lines are paralell. In the ad, the train travelled those lines.
I can solve the most complex problems at work, but the simplest are still able to floor me.
The train just went along the tracks, or did some kind of a fancy flick around?
Does the zig-zag stand for electricity?
My [stupid] mistake. There were two trains. One travelled the horizontal tracks, the other the vertical tracks.
Ah, okay. I think I get you, now. Still, the vertical one would have been a bit intriguing.
It seems to represent the two directions of trains on the two separate tracks. But I guess that wasn’t really the point.
To be fair, it’s a fairly early example of successful abstract corporate branding. It originated in the 60s, around the time that logos first became used for anything from 12-metre signs to 12mm logos on documents. It outlived the complete obliteration of its parent company (how many brand identities do that?), and is now regarded as the standard symbol for anything railway-related, including being a standard part of the road sign symbol collection.
If they introduced that symbol here as a road sign, most drivers would go “Say what?” and get creamed by the trains. Our sign here, at least for level crossings, is a steam driven choo-choo (well, it looks a lot like something from out of a kiddie’s toy collection. So, sue me.) 
Oh no, we have that one too…the old BR sign indicates stations
I think we still just have the choo-choo (there’s one just down the road pointing toward my local train station). We NZers must just be more literal.
OK, I’ll elaborate. The most common symbol is the ‘gate’ one, which looks like, ummm, a garden gate. That warns of a crossing which has closing barriers. The ‘choo choo’ one warns of a crossing which has no barriers - it has just warning lights. (Or in extreme cases, not even them - but there the train has to come to a halt and sound a warning before proceeding, and I believe the this situation only survives on a few preserved steam railways. It was once more common.) The BR sign we’ve been talking about is used for directions, not for warnings.
Ice Wolf - do you mean the ‘choo choo’ is used as an information sign like the BR one?
Basically, the black steam train symbol (no, I can’t bring myself to say “choo choo” anymore. Despite the giggles) is for level crossings with control arms or not. Plus, the same symbol points towards train station entrances. At the entrance are new blue signs with white writing, basically saying “Train station”. No other symbols that I recall, except for the Auckland Transport network logo, Maxx, which is a bunch of coloured squares (however, next time I go past, I’ll have a squizz and let you know if my memory is completely up the shoot.) Right now, Auckland’s metro lines (we only have two-and-a-half) are run by Connex.
Yuk - the internet isn’t the best place to search to find out how on earth Britain signed things pre-60s. Maybe I should turn to books…
Certianly many other European countries use their own standard symbols for stations on road signs - but I’ve yet to see anything that has the recongnisability of the BR sign. And the international road sign system relies on instant identification of symbols. Which seems to be why it’s become acknowledged as part of the UK signing system.
(I’m not saying all this to be nationalistic - it’s just that it’s an incredibly successful piece of design.)
I guess, now I think about it, that if BR hadn’t created such a good symbol, then maybe we’d be doing something similar to NZ, with the regular road sign acquiring a second purpose.
(BTW Connex have had their tentacles into our system, and fucked up big-time. Mwah ha haha.)
Our train system has been on life support in intensive care since way before Connex came into the picture. Used to be run by a rail firm from Wisconsin before this. S’okay, I’ve already heard about Connex’s stuff from the Australian railfans/gunzels, GorillaMan. We’re prepared for the worst. Might be pleasantly surprised, tho’.
???
Well damn. We Mac folks have authentic “doesn’t-equals” signs as part of our normal upper ASCII (option-equals) but the board doesn’t take it!
I assume the OP was entering them using Unicode?
It’s either ASCII or it’s not. And if it’s ‘our’ (ie ‘Mac’) ASCII, then it’s not. Just google ASCII and you’ll understand.
Certainly some individual fonts can put proprietary characters at locations normally occupied by other symbols. Zapf Dingbats for one, Wingdings (on the PC) for another. But in the case of doesn’t-equals, equals-or-less-than, or equals-or-greater-than, every complete “normal” font, dating back to bitmap fonts at the dawn of Macintosh time, will give them to you if you enter option-equals, option-comma, or option-period, respectively.
Lower ASCII (bottom 128) is very standardized. Upper ASCII (remaining half of the 256) is less so. Some characters typed on the PC in a plain ASCII text document and sent to a Mac user would come up with some characters exchanged in the upper ASCII, and vice versa.
I don’t know why Windows doesn’t make the doesn’t-equals symbol readily available, and likewise the equals-or-less-than and the equals-or-greater-than symbols. Most upper ASCII symbols are available on the Mac through the use of the option key in combo with a shifted or unshifted key; most upper ASCII on the Windows PC is available through a combo of Alt key plus a series of four numerical-keypad keys.
As far as I can tell, though, you can’t enter any of these three symbols in a plain text document with that method.
? - I doubt our opt-shift-K works, either.
? - option-=
™ - opt-2
FWIW, opt-shift-K works on [url=http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=troymccluresf]LiveJournal (see bullet points). But not on my site (see small print at the bottom, right above “Created and hosted on Apple Macintosh OS X 10.3.4 - Panther”.)
Poo.
LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=troymccluresf
my site: http://jjtm.homeip.net/
How the crap do you make those super- and subscripted characters?