TfL have announced official names and colours for the Overground lines:
We’re giving the lines on the London Overground names that celebrate London’s wonderful and varied cultural heritage. In this blog post, we tell you all about the names, the stories behind them and when the changes will come into effect.
The Daily Mail will be pig-biting mad.
The Mail would’ve named all six after Kate Middleton. Middleton line, Duchess of Cambridge line, Princess of Wales line, etc.
There’d also have been a Churchill Line, after the greatest Englishman in history, and perhaps a Spitfire Line or Longbow Line or similar to stick it to the vino-drinking foreigners.
I’d actually be okay with any of those, though not necessarily for those reasons! But then, unlike the writers of the Mail, I’m not constantly on the lookout for reasons to go insane.
You’ve now got me thinking they should’ve gone with the Clement Attlee line for the old East London line.
Where’s the Goblin Line
I would love a Goblin Line.
It’s now the Suffragette line.
Londoners will still call it the Goblin.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the overall name for the Overground, the Ginger Line.
I like what they were going for but Liberty Line feels like a bit of a cop out, named after “the freedom that is a defining feature of London”. Better than just more monarch names though I suppose.
Liberty Line sounds like something american GIs would snort after clearing a town.
I would say Liberty is the weakest by far. The rest I’m fairly happy with (after initially wondering why they didn’t bring back East London Line, or North London Line)
Sufragette feels a bit of a mouthful - I can see it becoming “The Suffy” or something. My feelings about ‘Liberty’ have probably been poluted by the way that some American extremists abuse the word.
We’ll see about Suffragette. The Metropolitan has two more syllables and doesn’t get abbreviated, but Lizzie does, and that has one less than Metropolitan.
Good point. I wonder if it’s because there’s not an obvious abbreviation. “The Metty”?
It’s always been the Met line?
Yeah, it’s a bit vague, really. Named after both the concept of freedom and the… medieval municipal administrative unit?
Apparently it’s the Liberty Line because the “we’ve spent far too much time trying to find something nice to say about Romford” Line wouldn’t fit on the signs.
One of the lines, ideally whichever is furthest away from it, should have been called the Mornington Crescent line.