Even Better Names for the London Overground Lines

A recession was announced this week. A mild one, but, a recession that comes off the back of a cost of living crisis, pandemic, and nearly 15 years of austerity, which itself was meant to get us out of previous recessions. Money is tight, basically. 

That’s why I skipped breakfast this morning, and had myself a quick and cheap lunch, so I could spend as much time as possible earning cold hard fucking cash for the taxman and the landlord. 

Later I have to go on the overground from London Fields to Stoke Newington. This is a line I know in my head as the Liverpool Street to Chingford Line, because that’s where it goes. So you can imagine my surprise, upon reading the news, that I will soon have to remember this line by a new conceptual name and colour, because Transport for London has spent £6.3 million on a funky rebrand of London’s six overground lines. I did the maths: That’s like, £1 million per rebrand.

“Not only will it be easier than ever to navigate the Overground, the lines now reflect London’s rich local culture and history,” said Mayor Sadiq Khan, as he stood proudly outside Highbury and Islington station. The new names and colours will be: the Lioness line (yellow), the Mildmay line (blue), the Windrush line (red), the Weaver line (maroon), the Suffragette line (green) and the Liberty line (grey). 

The problem is: These names are shit. Not quite as shit as the fact this all cost £6.3 million, but shit nonetheless. They come across like tokenistic, lazy attempts to do things that seem good and progressive but achieve absolutely nothing for real people. Like, you know, the estimated 15,000 very real people of the Windrush generation whose lives have been turned upside down by government failures and most of whom are still waiting on compensation. Aw, but at least they get a little tube line name!

Something had to be done about this, so I decided to use the power of my mind to place myself in the shoes of the Mayor of London, and devise my own TFL rebrand. Here are six very appropriate and very not shit at all names for London’s six overground lines – names that embody the city’s rich local culture and history. I’m willing to give them to TfL for a mere £500,000 each, that’s half price! And I’ll even slap the new stickers up myself. 

We need to use these lines as a way to show our respects and efforts in making London an inclusive and equal place for all. Therefore we should have the general equality line as a reminder of how the world should be an equal place – and to recognise all of the efforts toward equality in the city generally, whatever their struggles may be. Yes we could have been specific and called it, say, the Emmeline line (after Emmeline Pankhurst) but that sounds too close to the Elizabeth Line doesn’t it, and we can’t have Queenie turning in her solid gold grave. Plus what if people are like: “What about the other Suffragettes?” Or worse: “What about other people who campaigned for equality in the history of forever?” The General Equality Line fits the bill for everyone. 

This line will be grey, because grey is very serious and I’m very serious about this.

Hear me out, we need to make sure we are solving both the housing crisis and homelessness. This new line will be a testament to our dedication to eradicate homelessness, by spending a boat load of cash on new names for the overground lines in our wonderful city. As always, if you see a homeless person on the Homelessness line, please do not give them money, but yes you can make a donation if you must.

The Homelessness line will be blue to honour the cold nights these people have to endure. Blue means sad and this is a sad thing that we can hopefully solve by putting money into funky rebrands. You never know, this may actually end up doing far more for the issue than the blatantly obvious move of providing accommodation.

The cocaine economy is the great unifier of white collar (and nose) London. Across all political divides, from bankers to media elites to influencers, we all have one thing in common: A love of railing coke. In 2019, the cocaine market was worth £1 billion, according to Sky News. You could rebrand a thousand overground lines with that much money – if only! 

Nevertheless, we shall honour this local tradition with The Huge Massive Stinking Fat Line After Eight Pints on a Thursday Line. This line will be green, in reference to the green seal you see on the charming little baggies discarded all across our perfect city. 

Rest in peace, Yellow Brick Lane Bagel Shop: “Britain’s First & Best Beigel Shop” established in 1855, which was seemingly shut down and issued a repossession order this week. Your bagels were generally considered inferior to the white bagel shop, but at least your queues weren’t massively inflated due to TikTok hype. This line will, of course, be yellow.

Here in London, we care about the rest of the UK a lot. This line terminates at Cheshunt, which is technically in Hertfordshire. So when people pipe up and say, “What about the rest of the UK? We’ve been promised, and are in dire need of, better public transport, and you’ve just spent £6 mil on some colours and words in London!” we can confidently reply: “Look at the maroon one, it is called The Rest of the UK line and it even goes to Hertfordshire, which is not London.”

This line shall be maroon, because it is an old-timey colour, and anywhere outside of London is like stepping into the past.

And finally, we need to have one line that’ll convince the people who think “we used to be a proper country” that this whole rebrand was a wonderful idea. On this line, you’ll be able to smoke on the train and be horrible bastards to just about anyone as much as you please. You can say bigoted things and make jokes that are just jokes because they’re funny and not because you’re a bad person. 

Yes, we can have a stop named after Winston Churchill. This line will be red, like the red of our faces when we are filled with patriotic glee.