As the Overground has grown, calls have increased to provide its sub-lines with clearer identities of their own. Behind the scenes, TfL have been working to do just that. Those new identities have now been revealed.
The Orange
“But I thought it was all going to be orange.”
These were the words that ensured that the London Overground, which had launched in 2007, would stay a single colour – orange – on the Tube map. They were uttered by then-Mayor Boris Johnson in his office at City Hall.
TfL’s original plan had been to give the lines more of an identity somehow as the Overground network grew. Perhaps not in name – not in the early stages when there were less sections directly under their concessionary control – but at least in terms of colour.
Picking colours had always traditionally come towards the end of a new line’s design stage, or as they grow and fracture. And until then they still needed to be indicated in some way on the various maps and documents. This had been the case with the new sections of Overground that TfL had managed to pluck from the control of the DfT. Most notably the North London Line (NLL), which had been run into the ground by its previous post-privatization operator, Silverlink. Silverlink’s operators had never wanted it, but it had been bundled with other sections of railway that they did want. So they had no choice. It had been an unloved and under-developed line, until TfL finally secured its control.
With the support of Olympic funding, the redevelopment of the NLL and the East London Line (ELL) had begun. Indeed it was perhaps the ELL that had caused the “holding” colour for the new combined operation to be orange – it had previously appeared on maps as a sort of muddy orange, on the map, bordering on brown.
Whatever the reason, it turned out that day in the Mayor’s office that Boris Johnson had assumed the colour was permanent. For all of it.
So that’s what it became. The Overground would all be orange. It wasn’t a bad colour, after all. It stood out. It passed accessibility. It certainly made a statement and (rather handily) it meant no one had to repaint or update a lot of panels at various ELL stations. The colour there was already a close enough match in the right light (take a look at the panels on the platforms at Wapping to see the evidence of this).
The Turquoise
It would be easy to be outraged that the colour for the Overground was decided in such a frivolous way. But the reality is that Tube colours – and names – have always been picked on more of a whim than most people think.
For many years, for example, a story circulated that the colour of the Waterloo & City line was chosen because it matched the dress of a legal secretary who had worked on its transfer over from British Rail. She had worn it to the project party to celebrate the completion of the process, the tale went, and the project team thought she was rather attractive in it. So when they saw something close to that colour, it was fresh in the memory and they went with that.
It’s a story that has the ring of a pub tale about it. A railway myth. It reads too well and too conveniently, with the exact hint of low-level workplace sexism one would expect to find in a story that circulated among older railwaymen over beers after work.
So many years ago, we embarked on a mission to try and track the origins of this story down. After all, we thought, there’s enough clues within it that it’s possible – with a bit of lateral thinking and access to the right records – to at least disprove it. Especially as TfL were unable to confirm the origins of the colour themselves. If nothing else, we could at least kill off this myth.
Which is how, some weeks of detective work later, this author found himself chatting on the phone to a senior city lawyer who, with some amusement, confirmed that the Waterloo & City line was turquoise because of her.
The real story was close to the myth, she explained. It just needed the sexism stripped out of it. That was the part that had twisted the story over the years. As a junior lawyer she had worked as part of the transfer team. It had actually been one of her first jobs in transport law. And when it came time to pick the colour of the line, her colleagues had offered her the honour of doing so. Partly as a thank you for her work on what was a complex legal project. Partly because they thought it would be a nice way of marking the beginning of her career. Nobody else would know that was why it was that colour. Nobody would likely ever ask. But it would be a fun reminder for her, they said, so why not?
She agreed, and was shown a selection of pre-approved colours by the London Underground design office. Any of them would work, she was told. So just pick one. Noticing that one was quite close to turquoise – her favourite colour – she simply chose that.
Did she have a dress in that colour?
Of course, she confirmed. It was her favourite colour. But she doubted any of the team would ever have seen her in it. She wasn’t in the habit of partying with random, older male colleagues.
The new names and colours
As the two stories above show, line colours – and names – have always been somewhat arbitrary and random. So whatever names TfL had opted to use for the newly split Overground – and whatever colours – could never be “wrong”. Because there have never been any rules to break. Similarly, Londoners will always shorten any name that a line acquires to make it roll off the tongue quickly.
But this doesn’t mean that line names don’t matter. Or rather, that they can be made to matter if they are done right. Naming a line is a rare opportunity.
In the novel Going Postal, the fantasy author Terry Pratchett described a world where communication took place through a network of semaphore towers known as ‘The Trunk’. Along the Trunk, occasionally, would pass messages that were never officially recorded. Those messages, it turned out, were names. Names of people who had died in service to the network and which now circulated perpetually on it.
“You know they’ll never really die while the Trunk is alive.” The character of Moist von Lipwig mused. “it lives while the code is shifted, and they live with it, always going home.”
“A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.”
Cities are not men. But they are alive. They live through the people who call them home and through the events they experience. Both good and bad. People move on, times change but on some level the city… on some level London remembers. And that is what binds us, as Londoners, together. It is our most common ground.
The names and colours of the new lines are below, alongside the reasons for each one. We pass no opinion on them. We have no doubt many people will. And that’s fine. What we will say, is that they all refer to something about this city – our city – that does deserve to be remembered.
There will be plenty of people this morning – and indeed from this point onward – for whom the name ‘Mildmay’ meant nothing, for example. Yet there are many other Londoners for whom that word has long meant something. Now that something gets to be part of everything. It becomes part of the shared community consciousness that makes London live. It becomes something for all of us – and for the future generations of Londoners who will, occasionally, ask that important question:
“I wonder why it’s called that?”
It is always important to remember that “this means nothing to me” doesn’t always mean “this means nothing to anyone.” Visibility matters, and there is nothing more iconic, and visible, than the Tube map.
The Lioness line: Euston to Watford Junction. The Lioness line, which runs through Wembley, honours the historic achievements and lasting legacy created by the England women’s football team that continues to inspire and empower the next generation of women and girls in sport. It will be yellow parallel lines on the map.
The Mildmay line: Stratford to Richmond/Clapham Junction. The Mildmay line, which runs through Hoxton, honours the small charitable hospital in Shoreditch that has cared for all Londoners over many years, notably its pivotal role in the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, which made it the valued and respected place it is for the LGBTQ+ community today. It will be blue parallel lines on the map.
The Windrush line: Highbury & Islington to Clapham Junction/New Cross/Crystal Palace/West Croydon. The Windrush line runs through areas with strong ties to Caribbean communities today, such as Dalston Junction, Peckham Rye, and West Croydon, and honours the Windrush generation who continue to shape and enrich London’s cultural and social identity today. It will be red parallel lines on the map.
The Weaver line: Liverpool Street to Cheshunt/Enfield Town/Chingford. The Weaver line runs through Liverpool Street, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green and Hackney – areas of London known for their textile trade, shaped over the centuries by diverse migrant communities and individuals. It will be maroon parallel lines on the map.
The Suffragette line: Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside. The Suffragette line celebrates how the working-class movement in the East End fought for votes for woman and paved the way for women’s rights. The line runs to Barking, home of the longest surviving Suffragette Annie Huggett, who died at 103. It will be green parallel lines on the map.
The Liberty line: Romford to Upminster. The Liberty line celebrates the freedom that is a defining feature of London and references the historical independence of the people of the borough of Havering, through which it runs. The name references the borough’s motto and historical status as a royal liberty, an area that traditionally had more self-governance and autonomy. It will be grey parallel lines on the map.
We had previously looked at the evolution of the devolution of railway lines to London Overground, their lengthy and cumbersome official TfL line identifiers, and their commonly used line names. As well as the 2023 TfL process and criteria for Overground line renaming and colour selection. We then ventured a guess at the potential line names and colours – we were off on all of them, although we picked some of the new line colours correctly.
The names have all been chosen with the best of intentions, but I’m not sure any of them will really catch on in spoken form – at least not for a decade or two. I look forward to being proved wrong, mind!
Oh agreed.
I mean, I’ll be calling it the GOBLIN until I die…
Nobody will use these terms, we’ll all just carry on saying ‘the Overground’. I’d like to know how much it’s cost to come up with these names – complete waste of time and money.
I have mixed feelings about the names. I agree they’ve been chosen with the best of intentions, but I don’t think enough thought has been given to the functional purpose of line names, which is just as important as the symbolic purpose. This is especially the case as having six new names come into use at once is truly unprecedented in London’s history and will make it particularly challenging for people to remember all six new names.
I would’ve thought that geographic names would be preferable where possible – for example, the Lea Valley Line and the Havering Line. While for other lines (especially the orbital NLL and ELL), I agree that a non-geographic name is probably a more appropriate and less confusing approach.
One oddity is that the current location of the Mildmay Hospital is much closer to the Windrush and Weaver lines than it is to its namesake line. A minor detail, but perhaps symbolic of how functional aspects of line naming seem to have taken a backseat through this process.
Finally, on a somewhat flippant but somewhat genuine note, it’s a tad disappointing that they didn’t choose the Goblin Line, as that would’ve been an excellent opportunity to represent some specific railway history in addition to the broader history reflected by the other names.
So overall I’d give the names a generous 5 out of 10 – could be better (especially in terms of functional considerations), but also could’ve been a lot worse.
Great article, the anecdote about the Waterloo & City line is great!
Time will tell if laypeople actually use these line names…
Nobody will use these terms, we’ll all just carry on saying ‘the Overground’.
The fact that you refer to it as the ‘Overground’ is evidence that eventually people will call them by the names.
Line names tend to be generationally sticky. Crossrail will always be Crossrail to me. The Suffragette was never the Overground to me. It was the GOBLIN. Similarly I caught the ‘East London Line’ and ‘North London Line’ still. Hell, occasionally I’d accidentally refer to the latter as Silverlink!
And yet students at the university I work at look at me visibly confused when I use Crossrail, or North London Line. To them it’s the Elizabeth and (as you say) the Overground.
What I’m saying is that it’s important for us to recognise that “I won’t call it that” isn’t the same as “nobody will call it that”.
A new generation will grow up in London, or move to London, and for them that will be the only name it’s ever had. And maybe some of them will get curious and look up why. And then they’ll learn about Windrush, or the Mildmay Hospital, or a bunch of other things that are good to know about. Things that deserve to be placed on an equivalent level in our city’s cultural history with Queen Elizabeth or her Jubilee, at the very least.
As I say in the post: visibility matters.
As a geek, I was rooting for one of them being Goblin-themed but I really like what was picked.
It has a certain kind of individuals foam with rage on Twitter…
…good sign.
I’m not sure the TfL chosen names will gain much “traction” in normal use.
Londoners have a long rich history of loving to rip up expensive official marketing attempts to shreds and create their own names. e.g.
Bakerloo ( a portmanteau of Baker Street and Waterloo Railway)
GOBlin (Tottenham and Forest Gate & Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railways being too long even for the rail industry)
Misery Line (London Tilbury and Southend in the BR era now C2C)
Walkie Scorchie
Any bets on how quickly this happens with the new names?
e.g GOBlin becomes the suffering line,
Cheshunt/Enfield Town/Chingford the rag line,
ELL the windy line etc.?
Then naming an splitting still doesn’t address key passenger information point on there being problems core or individual branches of certain routes only, e.g. for the ELL there is a big difference in impact between an issue on the New Cross branch and an issue north of Surrey Quays, ditto with Lea Valley and NLL/WLL given the much lower service frequencies than LU especially on the branches.
Calling them all just “Overground” was viable before the routes out of Liverpool Street were added – until then, a problem on the Overground would probably affect all Overground services. Introducing separate names should have been done much sooner, doing it 3 months ahead of the mayoral election is a clear pre-election ploy.
I think that the best of the new names is “Windrush”, specifically as it is the route that passes through Brixton. Shame it doesn’t actually have a stop there.
I’ve lived close to and used the North London Line for over 45 years and will probably always think of it like that, but I accept the need for separating out the various lines by colour, and possibly most important, in the status reports.
However, I have a couple of issues.
1. The North London Line does not go through Shoreditch, so why name it after a hospital there?
2. Two pairs of lines have the same initial letter. I think that’s unwise.
Boris Johnson wasn’t mayor in 2007 – my understanding of this story was that this happened rather later?
Like many other commenters I’m not overly keen on the new names, although I do like the concept. I just wish the common & historic names had been given more consideration, especially where those names are already catchy (i.e. Goblin, although I can understand some negative points to that name). But ultimately, as long as a name isn’t (and doesn’t become) problematic due to a negative connotation, the chosen name doesn’t really matter that much and I agree that future generations will likely be fine with it.
Re: Colours. I also wish that the orange had been included somehow, such as being the centre colour. I realise, however, that choosing colours is hard enough without having to avoid clashes, especially with a colour like orange that clashes with a lot. Perhaps the station or connector blobs could have been orange instead?
Over on another blog many colour-blind commenters complained that they couldn’t tell the difference between some of the colours (although it can hardly be worse than all the same colour!). There used to be a black & white map for the colour-blind. Does this still exist? If yes, has it been updated? I’d be interested to know how they manage to come up with more distinct patterns for that.
The “North London Line” has been going much longer than I can remember I used it in the 50s and went to work using it in the 60s. Why change it??
Goblin seems to have evolved through local travellers so why change it??
World gone mad!
(Muttering of old man)
Boris Johnson wasn’t mayor in 2007 – my understanding of this story was that this happened rather later?
Yeah looking up, I’ve badly mangled that in the edit. I’ll unpick.
Never write articles at 2am.
The “North London Line” has been going much longer than I can remember I used it in the 50s and went to work using it in the 60s. Why change it??
Because almost everyone other than us olds had never used it anyway. So why change back to something that already only partly represented where the line went?
The Lionesses won the Euros at Wembley recently, but the Lions won the World Cup also at Wembley in 1966. While the alliteration of ‘Lion Line’ is harder to say than ‘Lioness Line’, could there not have been an inclusive term linked to both men and women’s England’s football success linked to the same place? They both wear ‘Three Lions on a shirt’.
The suffragettes were the militant, some say ‘terrorist’ suffragists. A tiny change and it could clearly be sympathetic to non-violent change.
The Mildmay line is further away from the hospital than two other lines. As this is the line that links east and west London, is there not a concept available that reflects this like the ingenuity of the Bakerloo line combination of Baker Street and Waterloo? This name feels like it has had the least amount of effort into selecting a great name.
The chosen names are not as disappointing as I feared.
Pity the Mildmay (LGBTQ+) Line isn’t pink, possibly because pink parallel lines might be difficult to discern on the map.
The Windrush Line name is particularly apt.
The Weaver and Suffragette Line names are good too.
Liberty Line is a stretch – nowt notable historically went on in Havering, and they needed something for this stump line.
Too bad GOBLIN and the proposed Brunel line name didn’t make cut, but obviously don’t fit the diversity name theme.
My guesses as to the nicknames Londoners will bestow on the lines:
Lionness – Cats line, or just Lionness
Mildmay – Mild line (May line won’t go as it’s the name of a politician)
Windrush – Windy
Weaver – Weaves
Suffragette – Initially Suffering, esp if jammed, but soon Jet line (cue the McCartney & Wings song on the same topic)
Liberty – Lib (Liberty sounds really American and jingoistic, we can’t have that)
I’m sure the LGBT community are chuffed that they get commemorated by an Aids hospice!
To honour a London hero of yore, and the musical heritage, why not Suffragette City line?
LBM:” Suggragette – Initially Suffering, esp if jammed, but soon Jet line (cue the McCartney & Wings song on the same topic)”
Presumably, if not a spelling mistake, LBM had a north London musical hero in mind?
“1. The North London Line does not go through Shoreditch, so why name it after a hospital there?”
But it does go through the Mildmay area (Mildmay Park and Mildmay Road) which is exactly where the hospital owes its name to.
@Tuppenny Tube
Cheers for pointing out my typo, and the fact I missed a major musical reference (that I’d played & loved playing in a band).
It’s clearly a “They’ll cross that bridge once they get there” question but I wonder what name the West London Orbital might take.
Also, the Windrush line already has a lot going on on its own. Would an extension to London Bridge warrant a split in two lines and additional name?
I’m sure the LGBT community are chuffed that they get commemorated by an Aids hospice!
Various personal friends, who lived through that awful time for the gay community here in London, have already messaged me to say that they were overwhelmed to see it acknowledged this way.
When you spent a good chunk of your life watching people trying to deny you existed, that a pandemic was ripping through your community, and being subjected to an almost-daily campaign of persecution from the Metropolitan Police with the tacit encouragement of the government, then yes – seeing an acknowledgement of that on the most prominent symbol associated with the city you love (the Tube map) can bring with it a small measure of validation and peace.
As I say in the article, visibility matters.
I foresee a rather large amount of frothing at the keyboard over the next few weeks as People Who Like Trains all chime in with why their selection is better than what TFL have come up with, how it’s a waste of money, why knowbody will use them, etc.
Better go and warm up the popcorn machine and make a fresh brew.
> Londoners have a long rich history of loving to rip up expensive official marketing attempts to shreds and create their own names.
Londoners haven’t renamed it the Vicky line in the past 50 years so why do people think these new names will be nicknamed?
> The “North London Line” has been going much longer than I can remember I used it in the 50s and went to work using it in the 60s. Why change it??
Because taking the North London line from Richmond to Acton is as much of a stretch as any of these names?
The people who have been ranting about left-wing political motivation for these names need to remember that the change of London line naming from “geographical” to “conceptual” began when a right-wing GLC administration decided to rename the “Fleet Line” to the Jubilee Line in order to appeal to royalists.
Why are people forgetting that the North London line ran through Shoreditch between Dalston Junction and Broad Street?
The discussion on social media makes me think of people discussing and arguing different eras of popular music, and their pros & cons. Someone realized that people are generally most passionate about the music they listened to in their teens, and early 20s. Reading through some of the online comments, there is a generally similar theme of ‘when I was young we called it xx, and that’s what it should stay’.
Reading the naming process again, I’m impressed at the effort TfL and the city administration took to talk to actual residents of the communities through which the Overground lines run. Versus public consultations are generally open to anyone, and so are often not truly representative of the ridership base.
Many of us have attachments to the lines we use the most, which engenders a sense of ownership. The new line names selection process sought the input those diverse communities and areas of the capital that have often been neglected, ignored, and stigmatised, which some of the Overground lines traverse. This renaming will increase their emotion connection to the lines and the city as a whole. How is this a bad thing?
There is a political flavour that we are likely to be seeing more of like in other countries.
In a traditional sense of acknowledging history and geography (as Mildmay was one of my school ‘houses’) – Mildmay after which the Hospital Mission was named was Chancellor for ER1 with his estate in Islington on the route of the NLL with Mildmay Park, located on the street of the same name, as a station on the North London Railway – closed by the LMS on 1 October 1934.
@ Jon Jones
>>I foresee a rather large amount of frothing at the keyboard over the next few weeks as People Who Like Trains all chime in with why their selection is better than what TFL have come up with, how it’s a waste of money, why knowbody will use them, etc.<<
Hope the popcorn is ready! At least one rail forum is already full of – unsurprisingly young males – all frothing at how political and woke it is and embarrassing that things are named after Female or BAME things and oozing in misogyny. Many also claiming they are only named this way for political points / to purposely wind people up [delete as applicable]
The one that I think really stands out as being potentially dodgy is the Lioness name. I think it’s just too recent to be commemorated – as a general rule I’m not sure you should name things after people until they are well in the grave.
It also feels wrong to name things after a group of people (as in the Suffragettes) – it just feels a bit lazy rather than actually getting to the detail (Windrush makes a bit more sense, as it was at least a singular ship)
@ John Bull
>>have already messaged me to say that they were overwhelmed to see it acknowledged this way.<<
Seen some similar sentiments in the news about the Windrush being recieved in similar positive ways.
Conversely also disappointingly seen some people try and claim we shouldn't dwell on things and move on and not keep on airing past grieviences by naming things. The old lets brush it under the carpet mindset.
As you say visibility and acknowledgement is important! Well except for those who are made uncomfortable by them!
As an Overground driver it’s sometimes odd hearing what the general public call our lines (although to be honest I’ve only heard the Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside line called the ‘Goblin’ on sites such as this where there is a specific interest). I’m afraid us drivers rather crudely call it ‘The Gob’ – Billy Bragg, Barking’s finest son might approve. The North London Line we simply call the ‘East/West’.
I think the Liberty Line might need to be said with a Romford accent “You’re takin’ a liburghty aren’t ya?” for it to soften into common parlance.
Mildmay might conceivably drift to become the Maggie May (without people realising the rather shady origins of the song title).
I do like the Windrush Line. Whether woke or not (why that phrase became a pejorative term I don’t know?), it’s impossible to travel through London without encompassing huge diversity in culture, in opportunity and in the realisation of potential. Traveling in just a few stops between the multimillion pound houses of Hampstead, through semi-industrial Willesden and on past the clad memorial of Grenfell Tower. Many of these chosen names are synonymous not just with a cultural legacy but also of mistreatment, sacrifice, of grassroots resistance and of change not yet completely fulfilled. There is a celebratory air too (most notable in the naming of the Lioness Line) and I’m unsure how that will bed in, but I think in time a certain fondness may develop that goes a little beyond the frivolous and taps into the deeper psyche. It’s a particularly London way of being.
I find this interesting. There’s swings and roundabouts on these new names but I’m certain they won’t find a properly established niche, especially as the history behind some is a bit dubious and some are also saying what about foreigners and certain situations where the names of the new lines will become confusing.
But there’s worse! Quite a few have picked up on the fact Liberty line is destined for the Rominister.
The big irony there however is ‘Liberty’ is the name of an annual festival for disabled people, and that festival is run by no other than the Mayor. Its meant to give disabled people freedom, the means to express themselves and to be creative.
Yet ‘Liberty’ is being used to denote a line which doesn’t go anywhere really. It just goes back and forth in an endless shuffle and this is generally the situation us disabled people find ourselves in. Despite all the bells and whistles in terms of equality, accessibility, etc, our lives get shunted into a systematic progression of discrimination, inequality and yet more discrimination. Our lives get shunted back and forth even though we want to break free of that.
For example the numerous times disabled people use the tube and lifts aren’t working and there’s this depressingly ongoing thing where someone has to take the tube to a different station or to backtrack and reach a different platform or something of the sort. Accessibility isn’t exactly what people think it is – its in fact a series of hurdles that if one is down the rest are effectively down and there’s this going to and fro to try and find a route that at least resolves the problems imposed by the inaccessibility in the first place.
To have that commemorated by a railway that shuffles back and forth in a limited sense smacks of complete ignorance.
Its not just that. The Liberty line looks almost like a branch of the Elizabeth line. Yes take a look at the map! Previously the two were distinct (purple/orange) but the Mayor has in fact taken away the freedom of some to be able to discern the differences so that’s another smack in the face in terms of ‘Liberty’ for disabled people.
To me what matters is how workable these are just as names regardless of symbolism (which, after all, will rapidly retreat into trivia-quiz territory). Three rather nice place names with centuries of proven usage: non-London rivers Windrush and Weaver, and Mildmay. Better than the default for the last 60 years of royals (which made a London river fall into the ditch), and not real people either (unlike streets or airports round the world).
I am so disappointed that the Overground lines weren’t named after Wombles.
Presumably all the people who are saying “Everyone will continue to call it The Overground” still say “Marathon” when referring to Snickers.
” The Liberty line looks almost like a branch of the Elizabeth line. Yes take a look at the map!”
It is connected to and served from Romford. Even though built by the LTSR the connection with the District has been severed.
If the names are considered as services rather like trains perhaps Railway Line enthusiasts would be less exorcised.
Following the ending of the Clapham shuttle the move to a singular name for the NLL/WLL combination is positive albeit with alternating destinations.
Before this article I had always considered the drain as a BR Grey – highlighting the turquoise tone was a revelation.
Interesting that there were six colours to choose from for the Drain, and the Overground has six lines. Even allowing for one of them having subsequently been used for CrossLiz, that would have allowed the Overground to use the other five (plus the existing orange)
I notice that the Circle and Line S “yellow” are more orange than of yore: probably to make the latter stand out against white where it is on its own north of Harrow, with no parallel line to contrast with.
Alek:
Perhaps you should take a look at the other connectors on the London Overground system in the new Autumn map? You’ll see the difference. They’re clearly separate. That at Romford is dire for it merges the Upminster and Elizabeth lines and then both are very similar colours which is difficult to see. This is not convivial in terms of accessibility. How about the Elizabeth line’s seats which are designed to differentiate between disabled users and normal users for when such needs occur. Can people see the difference in those? A lot of people can’t!
London Overground at the other switch-over locations where lines terminate are cross-platform like Clapham Junction** and Gospel Oak. At those locations the lines are completely different colours too. At Romford that is not even the case in any way or form. What’s more unlike the other change over locations, Romford’s Upminster platform is a long walk (or wheel) via stairs, ramps, lifts, corridors & bridges from the main line platforms. Hence the descriptive intent is completely, totally, wrong.
Isn’t that important for you do not seem to think so?
**Except the odd Stratford working which departs from platform 16 or 17.
I often hear people refer to any suburban rail service as ‘overground’ regardless of whether they mean London Overground. I’m confident that once these names become ubiquitous in wayfinding signage, travel information and audio announcements, they will become widely adopted parlance when people refer to particulars of a journey. In these cases, at least, then we’ll know what and where they are referring to.
TFL’s video showing how the signage will be applied at Highbury & Islington shows it will be a vast improvement for navigation and perception of the parts.
I might not have done it all quite like that, but overall, I find it good. Now let’s just get that map tidied up!
One comment on the map:
According to the key, the DLR and Elizabeth line look like subsets of the Overground, with trams and cablecar tagging on at the end.
It has always charmed me that the main loop (if I can call it that) of the Overground is formed from four existing lines: the East London Line, the South London Line, the North London Line and the West London Line. It wasn’t deliberate, especially, but just happened.
I think that the GOBLIN is such a great name that it should have stayed. I also liked the idea of the East London Line becoming the “Brunel Line”, because the line wouldn’t exist without the Brunels, and commemorating some great engineers in the name of the transport system somewhere is something I like.
That said, I think Windrush is an excellent name, particularly given the parts of London the line goes through. The Liberty Line and Mildmay Line meant relatively little to me when I first found out about them yesterday morning, but having since learned about the reasons for them, I think they are pretty good. I am a bit meh about the others, but they might grow on me.
I’d rather names of lines weren’t politicised but accept this battle is long lost (Jubilee, grr Horace Cutler, Elizabeth, Victoria, even Waterloo) so given that, this isn’t the worst selection of names that could have been chosen. Windrush is particularly good.
Like “Elizabeth Line” I do think “Sufragette Line” is a bit of a mouthful, but then someone pointed out so is “Piccadilly Line” and that’s not a problem so I guess we’ll all get over it.
Is it woke politicised virtue signalling as a naked pitch 3 months before an election? Yes, in the terms of Khan’s opponents, of course it is. But that doesn’t mean these are bad choices or that these lines shouldn’t be named at all.
Pleased that there’s going to be a Green Goblin line!
Cartographic question on connector blobs.
Why does Romford get a different treatment to Gospel Oak?
Are terminating services different to intermediate connections?
Where accessibility is comparable on both services they are normally shown as one coded ‘blob’.
I’ve seen some people elsewhere stirring it by pointing out the lack of a name for London’s Asian communities, and the obvious answer is to give a “desi” name to the Elizabeth Line, which links London’s original Chinatown in Docklands, the Bengalis in Whitechapel, the modern Chinatown between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square, and the Indians in Southall!
I was initially cynical – numbers are good enough for Amsterdam so why not London? However, the mayor’s team have done a good job with coming up with events in London which need to be remembered.
I was disgusted when Alex Mophead renamed Crossrail as the Elizabeth Line. Not that I disliked HM, but it was a clear attempt to appeal to borrowed Farage supporters. Seeing those same Farage supporters moaning now gives me a broad smile.
What an utter waste of money.
@DT
It was common ground with most people that something needed to be done to distinguish the lines – especially the “explosion in a spaghetti factory” in the NE suburbs. Only one person though having them all orange was a good idea – the same one who thought having parties during lockdown was a good idea.
So the maps and station signage would have to be changed anyway, and that would cost about £6m – whether the lines were called A, B, C, D, E, and F, or Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, and Grub.
@timbeau Surely are mixing Elisabeth Beresford’s creations with those of Gordon Murray…?
“Various personal friends, who lived through that awful time for the gay community here in London, have already messaged me to say that they were overwhelmed to see it acknowledged this way.”
I think this is one which is going to be hugely generation-variant – I’m sure that gay elders who endured the 1980s feel that way, but I definitely also find that the younger LGBTQ generation are resistant to defining themselves by a mercifully-now-treatable event they didn’t experience (I’m 45 so I sit right in the middle of this…)
More prosaic point: why is the text in the illustrative maps rendered in Helvetica/Arial rather than Johnston? Surely that’s not a deliberate design change…?
I’d be happier with the ‘Mildmay’ line if it had been named for the station it went through. Some of the names do rather have short-term appeal only.
And surely it was a terrible decision to give a single name to both sides of the Liverpool Street lines given their distinct catchment areas?
(oh, I still think of the former Bakerloo as the Fleet line)
Another problem with calling six different lines “Overground” is that a lot of people use it as a generic term for all non-LU local services serving London. This vernacular has been used for decades. For example “How do I get from Clapham Junction to Barnes?”… “Easy, take the overground”. It doesn’t help that, from 2003 to 2006 some of these services were half-heartedly, confusingly and redundantly branded as “overground network” or “on”.
I also have a concern that three of the names may demean the things that they are named for, in spite of the best intentions.
The Women’s Suffrage movement, the migration from the West Indies and the scourge of AIDS seem to me are really far, far too important to commemorate by a suburban railway service and by extension, diminishes them in turn. This is the material of remembrance, learning, study and hope for the future, not a five-car train going through Acton Central running ten minutes late.
If I was going to call a line ‘Suffragette’ it would be in Manchester.
The others, I have different views.
‘Liberty’ I can live with and is no more obscure than some names I have suggested previously such as ‘Effra’ and ‘Coppermill’.
‘Weaver’ is really pushing it in terms of obscurity. London was full of other small trades over the years, so you could have called it practically anything. I suggested keeping the name ‘Lee Valley’ but other suitable names would have been ‘New River’ or ‘Myddleton’.
‘Lioness’ is going to date quickly, and could end up being embarrassing if something goes wrong.
Not far from where I used to live in Hounslow is ‘Steve Biko Way’. The Borough had to put up a sign to explain exactly who this was. This sort of random point-scoring and tokenism was rife in the 80’s.
I suspect the panel choosing the names were all under the age of 40, and found some stuff on the internet.
@ Mr.SW
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/15/london-overground-new-names-and-colours-for-six-lines-revealed
“The names – announced by Transport for London (TfL) and the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, after consultation with passengers, historians and communities …”
“He [i.e. Sadiq Khan] said they had engaged with communities and experts to find names that would reflect the city’s heritage and be “a source of huge pride”, as well as highlighting lesser-known aspects of London’s history, such as Mildmay’s part in the 1980s Aids crisis, and the role of working-class suffragettes in the East End. “These stories are really important and hopefully people will find out more about [them],” the mayor said.”
I do agree with Mr.SW’s doubts about “Lioness” as it seems a bit too recent and risky, though I don’t have a better suggestion up my sleeve, other than perhaps bringing back “Harlequin”, but the people have spoken.
A a gay man who survived the AIDS pandemic, I’m a tag disappointed by Mildmay, because all it invokes in my mind in Princess Di (at least it did for my husband) The AIDS pandemic effected gay men in London AND almost everyone in Africa.
I would have probably preferred a line called “Pride” (because Lesbians!) but I guess this would blur the meaning of “Lioness”.
Quite why the Suffragette line isn’t a “purple and green” line I don’t know and Mildmay could be a six-colour rainbow. I guess Lioness should be red and blue for the England Team rather than the colour of an actual lion?
Many Underground line maps are mounted so that they are in full sunlight during most of the day. (presumably positioned by the same people who place ticket machines and ATMs with their little screens in full sunlight making them impossible to read). Printed colours on the maps fade in sunlight, mostly the yellows and magentas, leaving a puzzling array of cyan lines. How will the colours of Pugh, Pugh, Barney mcGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Goblin fare? (Thank you, Timbeau)
This is what I envisage as being ‘Liberty’ on the London Overground (or any other TfL managed rail route.) Except it’s essentially imprisonment. Yet another failure so soon after the stair climbing incident.
Exciting new names for the Overground coming soon – or should TfL get its act together in terms of accessibility first?
https://twitter.com/KatiePennick/status/1763254489610326490
Jas says
While I’m not opposed to the new names as such – though some such as the Lionesses and Suffragettes lines are a bit of a semantic stretch – I think it would have made far more sense to depict the Overground branches using names which reflect their geographical characteristics – not only to help travellers and visitors orient themselves more easily but also to keep the Overground as a separate identity from all the named Underground lines. Thus we could have had the obvious West London Line, the North London Line, the East London Line (serves largely east London north and south of the Thames), the Cheshunt & Chingford Line, as well as the the semi-acronymic Goblin and portmanteau Rominster Lines. Many of these names are already informally used and I predict will continue to be so, despite the promotional efforts of GLC’s marketing department.
I note also that the orange has disappeared form the overground colour palette – perhaps this is being held back for when they eventually split the Northern line!
Orange for the City Branch? Not unlike the original warm yellow of the City and South London Railway Locomotives. Hmm?
James Forrest:
As much as you may think that the compass points make sense as part of the London the overground lines run though, I suspect that most people visiting parts of London will know the postcode of their destinations as these have remained unchanged since 1857!
So the “North London line” would start in TW9 and SW11 make their way though W3, then NW10 and then SW5, and finally hit briefly hit N5 before heading into E8 and terminating in E20.
Your “East London Line” starts in N5, and then E1 for a while but then would crosses the river into SE16, and lots more SE postcodes.
Gospel Oak is in NW5 and Barking IG11 via N15 and E17.
Romford is RM1 to Upminster RM14.
Of course the Lea Valley line ends up at E4 and EN1 via mostly E postcodes, so what technically speaking has been “East London” from the Post Offices POV.
@BB
Barking Ilford Romford and Upminster postal addresses had “Essex” as the official bottom line until around 1970, when postcodes were spread beyond the inner London area where they had been in use for many years. (Inner as defined for postal service purposes, not administrative/municipal boundaries.) I would imagine TW (Middlesex) and EN date from the same period.
Had there been a Tory administration in City Hall they might have followed their previous practice and used royalty derived names such as the Phillip line, the Anne line, the Montecito and the Corgi line.
@ George Clark:
hmmm – they did not follow that theme with the cable car or the bike scheme, corporate/business promotional opportunities took precedence.
Perhaps we should just all be grateful that they’re not the BitTrade© line or Nicovape® line, or others of that ilk.