New Overground line names progress?

[stuu]

Of which the overground has the lowest and if it's the first interaction someone has of the network, they are going to think they'll need a 15 minute wait for everything. I am aware this is true of the extremities of the metropolitan line but the metropolitan line at times feels like a mode in its own right.

But that isn't really true. Lots of the overground is at least 8ph or more, and lots of the underground isn't any better, although centrally it's different obviously. Once waits are 5ish minutes no one really notices the difference. From an average passenger's point of view, there is nothing between the DLR at Greenwich and the District Line at Richmond. So is there any sensible reason to differentiate them on a map?

 

[BeijingDave]

I also like the fact that the Mildmay hospital is much closer to two lines which weren't called 'Mildmay'.

Simply superb piece of work.

 

[Recessio]

I also like the fact that the Mildmay hospital is much closer to two lines which weren't called 'Mildmay'.

Simply superb piece of work.

The Mildmay line is the closest to Mildmay Grove near Dalston. This is where the first medical staff were originally based from, although they mostly worked to initially tackle cholera in Shoreditch, which is where they later permanently relocated, but that's why a hospital in Shoreditch is named after a street (and area, and a park) that isn't nearby. In fact, there is even a disused station on the line called Mildmay Park.

Quote from the Hackney Gazette https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/24121694.tfl-named-mildmay-overground-line-hiv-hospital/

The history of the hospital begins the mid-1860s, when deaconesses from St Jude’s church in Mildmay Grove travelled to some of the East End’s worst slums to help care for those affected by a cholera outbreak.

The Overground line itself almost mirrors this journey, transporting passengers from Canonbury and Dalston Kingsland – the closest stations to Mildmay – and further into east London.

In 1877, the first Mildmay Medical Mission was established in a disused warehouse near the Old Nichol slum in Shoreditch, which was severely impacted by cholera.

 

[vuzzeho]

Plenty of people have claimed the line names are silly and talked of woke, virtue signalling

I think it's been lost on certain people that these line names can have significance to people, and that the topics these lines are named after do have actual people at their centre. As a minority myself, I don't feel too great seeing the mere idea that a line could be named after a generation primarily formed of black people is a contentious issue and people view it as 'woke virtual signalling' as you mentioned. I'm not even in love with the names (Suffragette is upsettingly weak) but the idea that my existence in my country is a topic for debate is incredibly sad.

 

[Dave W]

The Mildmay line is the closest to Mildmay Grove near Dalston. This is where the first medical staff were originally based from, although they mostly worked to initially tackle cholera in Shoreditch, which is where they later permanently relocated, but that's why a hospital in Shoreditch is named after a street (and area, and a park) that isn't nearby. In fact, there is even a disused station on the line called Mildmay Park.

Quote from the Hackney Gazette https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/24121694.tfl-named-mildmay-overground-line-hiv-hospital/

will you stop with these facts!? People are desperately trying to twist their knickers to prove a point that no one cares about here, you know!

Ill thought out, politicised, unsuitable. Just a few adjectives I've seen to describe the line names here. All euphemisms for "wahhh I don't like the name they've picked so it must be a political stunt. Or wrong. Or a bad decision" - no one has actually provided a rational reason why it was a bad idea, other than cost, which their perfect names would have incurred anyway.

My nearest station is on the Weaver now. Did it make the blindest bit of difference when it changed? No. How do you get to my house? On the Overground, just as you did before. What are the big issues I'm worried about in my area? Crime. Flytipping. Car parking. Railway line names come in somewhere in the mid hundreds of issues I'd raise with the mayor.

 

[450.emu]

will you stop with these facts!? People are desperately trying to twist their knickers to prove a point that no one cares about here, you know!

Ill thought out, politicised, unsuitable. Just a few adjectives I've seen to describe the line names here. All euphemisms for "wahhh I don't like the name they've picked so it must be a political stunt. Or wrong. Or a bad decision" - no one has actually provided a rational reason why it was a bad idea, other than cost, which their perfect names would have incurred anyway.

My nearest station is on the Weaver now. Did it make the blindest bit of difference when it changed? No. How do you get to my house? On the Overground, just as you did before. What are the big issues I'm worried about in my area? Crime. Flytipping. Car parking. Railway line names come in somewhere in the mid hundreds of issues I'd raise with the mayor.

The fly tipping is out of control near my Weaver Line stop of Bruce Grove. It's the Council's fault for telling people they have to pay a "collection fee" to have someone come and assess how to move the old sofa from the front garden (I guess Risk Assessments and all) rather than just collect it for free. So people just dump their fridges and sofas on random street corners and Veolia pick it up gratis.

Back to the Overground, people will still refer to the Goblin rather than the Suffragette. To be fair, Weaver Line sounds better than the Liverpool Street to Enfield Town / Cheshunt / Chingford Route. Re branding is in vogue if you can pull it off sucessfully. Jaguar fell on its face earlier this month with adverts featuring fashion, but no cars...

Hopefully this latest wheeze doesn't embolden TfL to rebrand sections of the DLR as the Charles and Camilla Lines in future....

 

[StephenHunter]

I assume it's going to take a few weeks for the new names to be changed on maps across the entire TfL network, the District Line still has the Overground orange for the likes of Richmond, Kensington (Olympia), Whitechapel, Barking and Upminster for example.

West Ham's Jubilee line platforms still have a diagram saying that you change at Canada Water for the East London line.

 

[jon0844]

Re branding is in vogue if you can pull it off sucessfully. Jaguar fell on its face earlier this month with adverts featuring fashion, but no cars...

It's almost certainly the exact same peoole who got so outraged at Jaguar's rebranding and slightly weird avant garde ad you'd expect in the 80s. It didn't need a car precisely as it was merely a teaser ad, with the actual car being unveiled in December.

It's a common marketing method used all the time but this was supposedly peak woke. Someone gay or trans might now buy the same car a middle age, straight alpha white male drives? (Except these days they don't and Jaguar is on its knees because most of its traditional customers are buying something else or have literally died).

I doubt the media even cares about any of this beyond creating rage bait that brings engagement and money from clicks.

 

[stuu]

Crime. Flytipping. Car parking. Railway line names come in somewhere in the mid hundreds of issues I'd raise with the mayor.

Crime is the only one of those issues which is anything to do with the mayor. And whoever it is, the budget is controlled by central government anyway so there's not that much scope for the mayor to do anything. London's mayor has far fewer powers than mayors in other equivalent cities like Paris or New York

 

[norbitonflyer]

London's got way too many lines to fit into a solely colour line system ,

The Paris Metro map has 16 Metro lines, five RER lines, 14 tram routes, the Orly shuttle, and nine "Transiliien" lines (SNCF suburban routes) Total 45

https://www.ratp.fr/plan-metro

London's shows 11 Underground lines, seven Overground lines (including the Elizabeth Line), one tram route, the Dangleway, and only shows one non-TfL route (Thameslink) Total 21.

The Paris map may not be a model of clarity, but it does manage to fit them all in.

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

For Paris there's a very nice unofficial version which I always use whenever I'm there. Much clearer than RATP's map https://metromap.fr/

 

[BeijingDave]

I think it's been lost on certain people that these line names can have significance to people, and that the topics these lines are named after do have actual people at their centre. As a minority myself, I don't feel too great seeing the mere idea that a line could be named after a generation primarily formed of black people is a contentious issue and people view it as 'woke virtual signalling' as you mentioned. I'm not even in love with the names (Suffragette is upsettingly weak) but the idea that my existence in my country is a topic for debate is incredibly sad.

Yeah, not wanting the lines to be named means we don't want black people in the country.

 

[CapitalStar378]

The vast majority of people will just get on with their lives, travel to work and back, and the line names will just become normal to them in no time. There will sadly be a few people who continue to make a big fuss about 'virtue signalling' etc. I can only imagine that they don't have much else to do.

 

[stuu]

Yeah, not wanting the lines to be named means we don't want black people in the country.

Fundamentally that is what some people are saying. They hate the names because they celebrate diversity. Despite the fact London has had people of many ethnic backgrounds from the day it was founded

 

[RGM654]

I've seen people accuse people only not liking the name because they have grudge against the royals, that's silly too. By just implying every critic is a bigot your ignoring the majority of criticisms on here which have got nothing to do with the backgrounds of the names

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Nov 2024 ==


London's got way too many lines to fit into a solely colour line system , but you could have "Overground Red" "Overground Blue" etc , which would also help to highlight it's ultimately a different mode from the underground, you can expect lower frequencies and longer dwells etc. It feels like TfL's strategy at times is to try and merge all it's different rail based modes into one branding blob, with the Elizabeth line and Overground silently getting turnt into additional tube lines but I don't think that's a good idea.

Are the "Underground" and the "Overground" really so different? The Underground has trains of two different sizes and a lot of mileage that isn't under ground. The Overground has some stretches in tunnel, admittedly not a lot. There are greater differences between the inner sections of Underground or Overground (urban, stations close together, frequent trains) and further out (suburban and even countryside, longer distances, less frequent trains).

The "Underground" name started with UERL (whose lines at the time really were mostly under ground) and latterly inspired "Overground". If (in an alternative universe) the entire network had been planned in one go, would those names even exist?

Personally I dislike the new Overground names (especially Lioness for the line I grew up near, which doesn't even have the closest station to Wembley Stadium), but I do consider them an improvement over not having separate names at all.

 

[Harpo]

the idea that my existence in my country is a topic for debate is incredibly sad.

Definitely. Our nation still has a huge amount of accepting of differences to do. The media itself stokes comment with terms like ‘openly gay’. I’ve never heard anyone described as ‘openly straight’.

Personal characteristics and origins shouldn’t be part of public comment.

 

[BeijingDave]

Fundamentally that is what some people are saying. They hate the names because they celebrate diversity. Despite the fact London has had people of many ethnic backgrounds from the day it was founded

Who is saying that?

I am a LibDem, Remain voter, speaker of four languages, well-travelled, my wife is Chinese. I don't want the names, and it's nothing to do with hating diversity.

It's the relentless stupidity of celebrating and naming absolutely everything, unnecessarily.

See this thread:

Silly unit names

Northern unit 150133 in the blue livery and gold stars, on hire to silverlink has been named wait for it Northern star, by silverlink the unit has been out of service for about a week due to severe wheel flats,(unit involved in a spad on the marston vale line), it only came back from Tyseley...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[stuu]

Who is saying that?

I am a LibDem, Remain voter, speaker of four languages, well-travelled, my wife is Chinese. I don't want the names, and it's nothing to do with hating diversity.

It's the relentless stupidity of celebrating and naming absolutely everything, unnecessarily.

There was a public consultation to name the lines, for the first time ever. Why is that a bad thing?

For the last time, having some sort of individual name is far more sensible than the previous mess. I just cannot comprehend how more information can ever be considered a bad thing. So the objections are primarily to what the names are... Virtually everything else in London that is named, is named after either royalty or major figures from the past. What is the harm in changing that a tiny bit?

 

[BeijingDave]

There was a public consultation to name the lines, for the first time ever. Why is that a bad thing?

For the last time, having some sort of individual name is far more sensible than the previous mess. I just cannot comprehend how more information can ever be considered a bad thing. So the objections are primarily to what the names are... Virtually everything else in London that is named, is named after either royalty or major figures from the past. What is the harm in changing that a tiny bit?

Most people accept royalty because they are above politics.

But, go ahead, we can all look forward to the day when all lines and units are pointlessly (badly) named, I'm sure.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Nov 2024 ==

Definitely. Our nation still has a huge amount of accepting of differences to do.

And this is total b*ll*cks, we compare highly favourably to about 90% of the world (maybe Scandinavia, New Zealand and the Netherlands excepted).

 

[Goldfish62]

And this is total b*ll*cks, we compare highly favourably to about 90% of the world (maybe Scandinavia, New Zealand and the Netherlands excepted).

I tend to agree. Although it feels that things have started going backwards in that respect, that's also true for many other countries. Just look at some of the politicians who are now running the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, for example.

 

[Lewisham2221]

And this is total b*ll*cks, we compare highly favourably to about 90% of the world (maybe Scandinavia, New Zealand and the Netherlands excepted).

Just because we do better than other countries doesn't mean we still can't do better.

 

[BeijingDave]

Just because we do better than other countries doesn't mean we still can't do better.

Maybe it's the relentless haranguing of largely good people that's driving them to right-wing parties?

I'm pretty sure there's just been an election somewhere significant that us liberals could learn something from.

 

[stuu]

But, go ahead, we can all look forward to the day when alll ines and units are pointlessly (badly) named, I'm sure.

Lines in London have names. They just do. Most things do too. Trains, hospitals, streets, schools etc

 

[renegademaster]

Lines in London have names. They just do. Most things do too. Trains, hospitals, streets, schools etc

Most train services don't have names. Just because it's the way it has been done , doesn't mean it has to be done always and forever. New York metro would didn't always have it's present alphanumeric system but it would have been a mess if they didn't implement it as they started to amalgamate different systems

 

[Dave W]

Yeah, not wanting the lines to be named means we don't want black people in the country.

Who is "we"? You've gone on to list a long list of reasons you think make you liberal and open minded so you're obviously not one of the people OP is referring to.

 

[Wolfie]

The Mildmay line is the closest to Mildmay Grove near Dalston. This is where the first medical staff were originally based from, although they mostly worked to initially tackle cholera in Shoreditch, which is where they later permanently relocated, but that's why a hospital in Shoreditch is named after a street (and area, and a park) that isn't nearby. In fact, there is even a disused station on the line called Mildmay Park.

Quote from the Hackney Gazette https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/24121694.tfl-named-mildmay-overground-line-hiv-hospital/

Well said. I live literally around the corner from there (in Mildmay ward, Islington) and despair at some of the culture war BS l keep seeing. Guess what my local library is called....

 

[talldave]

One upside of the Windrush rebrand I've observed at Crystal Palace is that Windrush trains now have a separate departure screen from National Rail services. Sadly though, TfL's obsession with not showing departure times persists. I find this brain numbingly stupid as every resource I use for planning rail travel identifies trains by their departure time and TfL deliberately hides this from you - until you get to the platform, at which point sanity is restored. This practice should be deprecated by someone, I just have no idea who's responsibility it would be.

 

[Wolfie]

One upside of the Windrush rebrand I've observed at Crystal Palace is that Windrush trains now have a separate departure screen from National Rail services. Sadly though, TfL's obsession with not showing departure times persists. I find this brain numbingly stupid as every resource I use for planning rail travel identifies trains by their departure time and TfL deliberately hides this from you - until you get to the platform, at which point sanity is restored. This practice should be deprecated by someone, I just have no idea who's responsibility it would be.

TfL adopting TfL and not National Rail standard practice. Unsurprising and unlikely to change. I imagine that if you engaged with TfL they'd almost certainly quote the service frequency as a reason.

 

[renegademaster]

TfL adopting TfL and not National Rail standard practice. Unsurprising and unlikely to change. I imagine that if you engaged with TfL they'd almost certainly quote the service frequency as a reason.

It's only every 15 minutes at West Croydon, that's to the point where knowing the timetable would be useful

 

[Goldfish62]

Well said. I live literally around the corner from there (in Mildmay ward, Islington) and despair at some of the culture war BS l keep seeing. Guess what my local library is called....

When the line name was first announced I did indeed immediately think of Mildmay Park.