London’s Overground system, perhaps the least known but still important part of the city’s mass transit network, is getting new recognition with new names for its six lines and, finally, colors of their own on the map.
The six lines will now each have a distinct color and an easily identifiable name on the map, correcting an obvious error in making them all one-color, a situation one critic described as a “mass of orange spaghetti.” Instead of distinct line names, they were identified by their terminals, and several of the lines have multiple terminals.
The names chosen reflect London history, some quite recent and some long-standing. Among the names: Windrush, for the post-war migration of Caribbeans to London, Mildmay for a hospital that played a key role during the AIDS crisis, Suffragette, for the pioneeers of the women’s vote movement and Lioness for the England women’s football team.
The system, operating since 2007, was cobbled together from a collection of unused, little-used and newly-built branches, many inherited from national and regional rail networks. Its lines link numbers of outlying parts of the city to the center, and intersect with the Underground and other lines at numbers of stations.
