London Overground name changes to start tomorrow
The official rollout of the London Overground name changes will start tomorrow (Wed 20th November), with a few stations being upgraded. The majority will be unveiled next week.
Transport for London (TfL) has been planning the name change for months, and most stations already have the names in place and (usually) covered up in temporary stickers. However, TfL says it won’t have a one-day big reveal with each station pulling off the covers on one day and will have a phased rollout of the name change.
In total, it’s taking nine days for the makeover to be completed.
TfL says that the name change has required them to update around 6,000 station wayfinding signs, Tube maps, station digital screens, onboard train information, Journey Planner and TfL Go. Audio and visual announcements on trains and stations will also be updated.
The new names and colours are:
- Lioness (running from Watford Junction to Euston) – yellow
- Mildmay (running from Richmond and Clapham Junction to Stratford) – blue
- Windrush (running from Highbury & Islington to New Cross, Clapham
- Junction, Crystal Palace and West Croydon) – red
- Weaver (running from Liverpool Street to Enfield Town, Cheshunt and Chingford) – maroon
- Suffragette (running from Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside) – green
- Liberty (running from Romford to Upminster) – grey
Although most stations and trains will be updated by the end of the month, the audiovisual passenger information system on the newer Class 710 trains will follow by January 2025.
Andy Lord, London’s Transport Commissioner, said: “This is an exciting step as millions of customer journeys on the London Overground will be transformed by making it simpler to navigate. Individual line colours and names have helped customers navigate the Tube for more than a hundred years, so we wanted to take a similar approach on the London Overground. These changes will help improve customer confidence when travelling and encourage more to use our services.”
Looking forward to it. At first I wasn’t sure about the names, particularly sad the goblin name wasn’t picked. But I really like them now, it’s nice that the people are part of the railway/transport history. I wonder as the overground expands, are TFL more likely to give branch lines (say the 3 loop southeastern lines) separate identities or one larger identity etc. the windrush line could easily become a monolithic network swallowing up the caterham/tat corner lines, and other south suburban service’s.
I do wish they’d have incorporated maybe an orange line or something in the middle instead of white for that brand consistency. Then say purple for the Lizzy and then purple for the middle on CR2/3 if they ever happen, or thameslink if it came under a future London transport organisations brand identity. The 2 colour 1 white stripe feels inconsistently used across TfL and network rail maps.
I think the change will be particularly useful on the Victoria line. Currently several stations along the line feature ‘Overground’ as an interchange, which the casual tourist might think are the all part of the same line. The naming of these lines should hopefully make provide some much needed clarity to those who aren’t regular commuters.
The naming won’t be extended to other TfL modes for budgetary reasons, so it’ll still be Overground everywhere else.
@Barry was that a recent change? I thought that they were going to cover signage on all TFL services. Was this video changed to remove reference to the new services on the Victoria line?
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/london-overground/the-new-look-london-overground?intcmp=75267
I can imagine how much will cost new labeling, signs, etc.. So traveling will be more expensive.
£6.3 million, which has been budgeted for by the Greater London Authority and spread over two finacial years (2023/2024 and 2024/2025). Set against over 10 million passenger journeys on TfL services on any average day, a cost of that size is easily absorbed.
About time the branches were individually named, I think the same should be done to the DLR.
So there is nothing of higher priority for our money to be spent on ? No doubt we will be being asked to pay more for even more vanity projects. Where do politicians think the money comes from ? When one of the lines was called ‘The North London Line’ it gave passengers a very good clue as to where it served – it’s not clever to make matters less simple.
This ‘vanity project’ was included in Mayor Khans election manifesto.
So you’re complaining about a politician doing something he promised to do?
And this will make things simpler for a lot of people.
Oh and define ‘vanity project’ because one persons vanity project is anothers essential service.
I’ll still call the Mildmay Line the North London line like I’ve always done.
And demand the driver take you all the way to Broad St station.
This is outrageous ? spending millions naming lines when in my opinion isnt necessary in Paris tge underground is alot more complicated than in london and the tourists manage OK,would cost a lot less money if the Mayor reinstate the travelling before 9am to the pensioners to make their life easier when they have to attend hospital appointments early in the morning.
No the money is better spent on the signage.
This is a complete waste of money.
Where I live, the buses are inadequate and the money would have been better spent on a few more buses or the long-promised step-free access at a couple of stations.
But then I live in North London and Khan is a South Londoner.
In regards to the comments about MILLIONS being spent, there is very little you can do these days without spending a million. With costs, that’s about 10 people working for a year.
That’s a bit of a sweeping statement. It could also be more than 60 teenagers on NMW.
Silly names
Many of these signs have been around for a long time and were due for replacement for some reason or another, new stations, new interchanges, graiffti, rust etc. This project has been in the works for 5+ years so signs were not replaced and just vinyled over in preperation for this.
All these people complaining about ‘why wasn’t the money spent somewhere else’ are the reason why no one is ever happy and nothing ever gets done in this country. On the flipside why don’t we unname all of the Underground lines are just colour the lines black and call it ‘Tube’?
The plan was first floated in 2021 but the signs have only been under wraps for a number of months. The original launch date was August then September but there was the cyber hack which put it all back for eight weeks or so. It’s now a phased process as opposed to an overnight unveiling so it will take a week or so to get all the signage up across the six lines. And it’ll probably take 18 months before it’s fully finished across the TfL network with in-car diagrams, announcements etc.
Not enough consultation testing among Colour blind customers, IDAG is a drop in the ocean, one size does not fit all,colours, definition, contrast, different backgrounds of lighting night and day
Will ask for Equality Impact Assessment under the FOI
The intermixing of politics into the naming of rail lines is distasteful and I believe has no precedent.
I wonder how would Khan feel if a few years from now a London mayor from another party renamed these lines in accordance with their own political predilections.
I think “Victoria”, “Jubilee” and “Elizabeth” are fairly political!