There’s a map I like to look at, when I want to cheer myself up with some nerdy London transport goodness. It’s not one of those (believe me, there are many) that imagines vast numbers of new lines, a suspiciously high proportion of which serve the area in which the map-maker lives: the only new tracks it proposes, the Elizabeth line and the Barking Riverside extension, were both already on the table when TfL produced the map in 2016.
What the “Prospective London Overground services” map does show is a vision of a world in which the network has expanded, to take in almost but not quite all of London’s national rail network. The idea of bringing services to Bromley, Dartford and Surbiton under TfL control was a fantasy, back in 2016, but an entirely plausible one: all the routes shown were part of franchises whose contracts have since come up for renewal. It would have been quite possible to devolve their suburban branches to TfL.
