Incidentally, someone was describing a journey to me this morning and
she said "I get the... vertical bit of the Overground and change to
the... horizontal bit of the Overground". She sounded like she felt a
bit foolish describing it in such terms, but TfL have left people with
little choice. On querying it turned out that she has lived in Surrey
Quays for decades and is well aware that the vertical line used to be
called the East London Line, but as a young woman working in fashion she
would be particularly keen to avoid looking out of date, and she has no
up-to-date term to describe the line. The experience gelled with recent
thoughts of mine.

My own recent foray around East London presented me with confusing signs
to multiple DLR platforms at Stratford, and confusing new signs in
Hackney Central / Downs pointing from one half of the station to the
other. As I arrived at Hackney from Chingford, robobint said "Change
here for trains to Enfield Town" but didn't mention Cheshunt. And the
part of the tube map between Seven Sisters and Mile End looks like an
explosion in a spaghetti factory, utterly defeating the eyes' ability to
plan routes without having to think too hard.

I believe that the Overground brand, and to a lesser extent the DLR
brand, are obfuscating rather than enlightening.

I don't even know what promise the Overground brand is supposed to make.

"Underground" means that wherever I may have ended up, I go in here and
I can get frequent trains through Central London where I can make one
change to another frequent line that will take me home. There are a few
exceptions, like Roding Valley, but the Underground largely lives up to
that promise.

"Overground" - what is that promising? It used to mean orbital travel,
for the most part, but that doesn't hold any more. If someone stumbles
out of a party at 7am on a Sunday morning and finds himself at Turkey
Street station, what does that Overground roundel represent? 2tph to the
edge of Zone 1, and probably two changes before he gets home? That's
hardly anything for a station to brag about - there are very few
stations in Greater London that offer less (Emerson Park is ironically one).

Overground is actually a negative concept. Just as the Volkswagen brand
means "This is made by the same people who make Audi's, but it would
harm the Audi image if we wrote Audi on a car like this", Overground
means "This is run by the same people who run the Underground, but it
would harm the Underground brand if we wrote Underground on stations
that have infrequent service which only touches Zone 1 or avoids it
completely. So the Overground brand exists purely to avoid tarnishing
the reputation of the Underground.

And yet, the Overground management act as if they have an inferiority
complex, writing Overground everywhere and doing their best to
obliterate the historic line identities as if writing Overground on
something is the finest praise imaginable.

We need different colours and line names. We need the trains to
Chingford to have a different colour on the map from the trains that
call at London Fields and Cambridge Heath.

And the DLR needs to get line names too, so that the signs at Stratford
and on the District Line line guides can start making sense.
http://www.metrolondres.es/wp-conten...-mapa-tube.jpg
has four different DLR interchanges, and no clue as to which you're
supposed to use to get to which part of the DLR.