One of the things that makes London’s transport network so special – along with the world’s oldest underground railway, and the invention of the non-geographic metro map – is its use of language. A lot of transit systems rely on district names and street addresses when naming stations; almost all label routes with numbers, letters or colours. London, though, has Swiss Cottage and Elephant & Castle stations, the Jubilee and Bakerloo lines. It gives the network personality.
It always felt a bit alien, then, that an increasingly important chunk of the city’s transport system didn’t bother with any of this. The London Overground, launched in 2007 as a brand for former national rail routes, serves many parts of the capital neglected by the tube. Its half a dozen routes, though, have so far been shown on the map in a uniform orange, and are officially described in such thrilling terms as “the Watford line” or “the Stratford to Richmond/Clapham Junction route”.
