DLR & Overground line names and colours

[jopsuk]

Taking the discussion from here

How would you split and name the various services of the Overground & DLR?

TfL define the following Overground Services:

Richmond and Clapham Junction to Stratford - the WLL & NLL

Gospel Oak to Barking - aka GOBLIN

Watford Junction to Euston - the Watford DC

Highbury & Islington to West Croydon and Clapham Junction - the ELL and SLL

Liverpool Street to Enfield Town, Cheshunt and Chingford - The West Anglia lines

Romford to Upminster - a curio of a shuttle

Perhaps Mayors and those who held a similar position in previous set ups?

So start with the modern Mayors and the two totemic, orbital, lines:
WLL/NLL - Johnson Line - he at some point lived in Primrose Hill
ELL/SLL - Livingstone Line - he went to school in Tulse Hill

The other lines can have leaders of the GLC. Of which there were five, one of course later became Mayor. Handily, that's four left.

West Anglia - Cutler - grew up in Stoke Newington

Romford to Upminster - Goodwin - awkwardly southern

Watford DC - Plummer - Marylebone council. Bit unfortunately wanted to pave over the Chiltern mainline.

GOBLIN - Fiske- can't find where he grew up. Served various parts of London

Further Overground could mine the London County Council


There's Six DLR routes on the official map
Bank-Lewisham
Bank-Woolwich Arsenal
Tower Gateway-Beckton
Stratford-Lewisham
Stratford International-Woolwich Arsenal
Stratford International-Beckton

Ideas for names?

For colours, could putting a coloured stripe (rather than white) down the middle be clear enough for accessibility? Avoid red and yellow for the Overground, and steer clear of Turquoise, light blue etc for the DLR. And in the future, do similar with Crossrail lines?

May even, if and when TfL take over south London Metro routes, need to use more outline colours (one per sector maybe). There's little to be done though- the map will look a mess!

 

[randyrippley]

somebody been listening to Timmy Leary recently?

 

[Galvanize]

Bank-Lewisham=The Maritime Line (Referencing to Greenwich with its Nautical connections, and to a lesser extant, the Docks themselves)
Tower Gateway-Beckton=The Hamlet Line (referring to Tower Hamlets)
Bank-Woolwich Arsenal=The Royal Mint Line (referring to Royal Mint Street, possibly it can also be referring to the Royal Docks).
Stratford International-Beckton/Woolwich=The Olympic Line (referring to Stratford being the centre of it all during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games).
Stratford-Canary Wharf=The Billingsgate Line (Referring to Billingsgate Fish Market which can be seen quite clearly from the train as it leaves Canary Wharf and Poplar stations).

Sorry...boredom got the better of me!

 

[NotATrainspott]

If they're to be named, then I don't think they'll be given invented names. So long as the naming is clear and distinct, there's no real need to name them after people who no one knows about.

• Being clear and distinct probably means naming the Northern City line the 'Moorgate' line. It's particularly important as the two run on top of one another, and calling one the 'Northern City' line and the other the 'City branch of the Northern Line' is a recipe for chaos. It's the only line terminating at Moorgate, and that's a pretty reasonable name which isn't going to cause any more confusion.
• Thinking of the Northern Line, after the Camden Town rebuild it's pretty much certain the two branches will be split. There's a nice ying-yang feel to naming the one which goes to Morden the 'Southern' line but if 'Southern' is still a brand name on the NR network, then that's another recipe for confusion.
• I don't see a problem with calling the WA lines the 'Chingford', 'Cheshunt' and 'Enfield' lines, since they all end up in Liverpool Street. They may share tracks and stations, but so do the SSL lines and passengers don't get upset about that. So long as the maps are clear, they'll know which train to get to go where they need to go. Since the announcements would have to mention the name of the terminus anyway, they may as well say 'Chingford Line train' rather than 'Lea Valley Line train to Chingford'.
• The 'DC' in 'Watford DC' is pretty meaningless, but I don't think there would be much confusion about calling it just the Watford line given that it'll be going there. Yes, it would join up with the Metropolitan line at either end, but the two are named differently enough that no one is going to be overly confused.
• 'Goblin' isn't a nice enough name for it ever to be used publicly. 'Gospel Oak' line is more unique than 'Barking' line, and 'Gospel Oak to Barking' line is just too long.
• West, East and North London lines are fine. No need to over-complicate things. Yes, the ELL now does the SLL as well, but every train ends up going through the ELL core so it's not going to be sensible to split them. 'South and East London' line is too complicated again, as then it's a similar problem to the Northern City with misheard announcements and the like.

Future LO lines elsewhere may as well get similarly unique and geographic names. Although the detail of the rail devolution announcement didn't say anything about LO branding, I think that it's almost certainly going to happen given the strength of the LO brand and the publicity it brings. The increase in tax revenues just as a result of contracting the services so that they're painted orange and in LUL livery would probably be more than enough to cover any additional cost of doing so.

 

[edwin_m]

Seeing as the fashion seems to be to name lines after monarchs, how about George I to George VI for the six Overground lines - one of them may be a bit crazy. Or leave room for future expansion and go for the Henries...

 

[Busaholic]

If they're to be named, then I don't think they'll be given invented names. So long as the naming is clear and distinct, there's no real need to name them after people who no one knows about.

• Thinking of the Northern Line, after the Camden Town rebuild it's pretty much certain the two branches will be split. There's a nice ying-yang feel to naming the one which goes to Morden the 'Southern' line but if 'Southern' is still a brand name on the NR network, then that's another recipe for confusion.

• 
  
  As the Northern Line grew out of the City and South London Railway, the world's first tube, the Morden via City to High Barnet line should maybe revert to that. On the other hand, perhaps it should stay the Northern and let the Battersea job reflect who it's being built for and be called the Nondom Line, which would make a field day for graffiti artists.

 

[randyrippley]

'Goblin' isn't a nice enough name for it ever to be used publicly. 'Gospel Oak' line is more unique than 'Barking' line, and 'Gospel Oak to Barking' line is just too long.

How about the "Gasping Line"? Better than Goblin........

 

[Bletchleyite]

U1, U2, U3 etc, and S1, S2, S3 etc. They can still have subsidiary names, of course; the Hamburg U3 is known as the Ring.

 

[randyrippley]

given our multicultural multilingual society, it may just be simpler to name the routes after their colours on the map i.e. black line / green line / magenta line....
you just need enough colours....so cobalt line, sky blue line, navy blue line, crimson line, scarlet line..........platforms and signs could be themed appropriately

 

[MCR247]

given our multicultural multilingual society, it may just be simpler to name the routes after their colours on the map i.e. black line / green line / magenta line....
you just need enough colours....so cobalt line, sky blue line, navy blue line, crimson line, scarlet line..........platforms and signs could be themed appropriately

I don't understand this logic? If you don't speak english surely you're just going to basically ignore the names given (and probably use the colour in your native language) unless asking someone for help? How is 'magenta line' more simple than 'metropolitan line' expect for the fact the word is shorter?

 

[randyrippley]

I don't understand this logic? If you don't speak english surely you're just going to basically ignore the names given (and probably use the colour in your native language) unless asking someone for help? How is 'magenta line' more simple than 'metropolitan line' expect for the fact the word is shorter?

Simple. If the line branding and platform signs are in (for instance) Magenta, the line on the map is in magenta, then you know you're on the right line. You're always going to have a language problem, but explaining a colour to someone in another language is always a heck of a lot easier than giving them an arbitrary name. If they know the line they want is green on the map, and the station signs are green, then they're in the right place.
I've seen this done in Doctors surgeries which have a high degree of immigrants, often illiterate. If you tell them to follow the green signs to the green waiting room they understand. If you tell them to go to the waiting room named "XYZ" which is two floors up at the end of the corridor, then they don't

 

[NotATrainspott]

given our multicultural multilingual society, it may just be simpler to name the routes after their colours on the map i.e. black line / green line / magenta line....
you just need enough colours....so cobalt line, sky blue line, navy blue line, crimson line, scarlet line..........platforms and signs could be themed appropriately

'Take the blue line to' might be okay when you have a small network of only a few lines in primary colours, but it's not going to work if you have multiple shades. There are four blue lines on the network - Piccadilly, Victoria, W&C and DLR - so it isn't even as easy as saying 'light blue' and 'dark blue'. So long as the names can easily be understood (if a Chinese tourist tried to say 'Piccadilly' line it is unlikely you would misinterpret them) there's no problem with using names.

 

[MCR247]

Simple. If the line branding and platform signs are in (for instance) Magenta, the line on the map is in magenta, then you know you're on the right line. You're always going to have a language problem, but explaining a colour to someone in another language is always a heck of a lot easier than giving them an arbitrary name. If they know the line they want is green on the map, and the station signs are green, then they're in the right place.
I've seen this done in Doctors surgeries which have a high degree of immigrants, often illiterate. If you tell them to follow the green signs to the green waiting room they understand. If you tell them to go to the waiting room named "XYZ" which is two floors up at the end of the corridor, then they don't

I think most people who don't speak English would consider magenta just as arbitrary as metropolitan :roll:

And the bit i've highlighted in bold, surely this is just the same as now? since shades are going to have to be used, colours won't make it any easier. In fact having say 'Light blue' and 'dark blue' makes it a lot harder for people with heavy accents as there is much less difference between those names than there is between Piccadilly and Victoria

 

[jon0844]

RGB values? Or from a map, maybe CMYK numbers? No chance of getting confused then. ☺️

 

[Clip]

They don't need names especially not tagging them the same as the do in Germany.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Simple. If the line branding and platform signs are in (for instance) Magenta, the line on the map is in magenta, then you know you're on the right line. You're always going to have a language problem, but explaining a colour to someone in another language is always a heck of a lot easier than giving them an arbitrary name. If they know the line they want is green on the map, and the station signs are green, then they're in the right place.

For a long time I've secretly wished TfL would apply that logic to the trains themselves - paint the trains by line colour. Can you imagine the sight of a pure jet black Northern Line train sweeping into a black painted station deep underground... Cool or what;

 

[charley_17/7]

Watford - Euston DC was called the 'Harlequin Line' in NSE days.

Harlequin Line (Watford - Euston)
North London Line (Richmond - Willesden Junction - Stratford)
West London Line (Clapham Junction - Willesden Junc - Stratford)
East London Line (Clapham Junc. - Highbury & Islington)
South London Line (South Croydon - Highbury & Islington)
Havering Line (Romford - Upminster), or Philip Line (to connect to Liz)

 

[Deerfold]

For a long time I've secretly wished TfL would apply that logic to the trains themselves - paint the trains by line colour. Can you imagine the sight of a pure jet black Northern Line train sweeping into a black painted station deep underground... Cool or what;

Might even attract Hotblack Desiato!