London Liverpool Street

"Lew 1" <lewiscox2000@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:fljjd6$mdr$1@aioe.org...
>> I'd agree - its only in the last few years it got into the media -
> possibly
>> since the ill fated 'overground network'; would that be about 4 or 5
> years?
>> I must admit to skimming past the earlier suggestion that the term had
> been
>> in use a hundred years...
>
> Agreed - A lot of people around Richmond / Staines way use the term
> Overground, almost certainly because nearly every South West Trains
> station
> in that area has "Overground Network" in *orange* letters.
>
> London Overground is also using... Orange. I do wonder if anyone will
> confuse these signs for being London Overground, especially since
> Overground
> Network seems to refer to nothing at all.
>

We discussed it a few weeks ago, it seems TfL have washed their hands of the
original, and I can't see the likes of SWT or Southern paying good money to
get rid of the redundant signage on station totems etc. I don't think the
platform line maps are much of an issue, I guess they could usefully be
overlabelled with something else though.

Perhaps the people of Richmond etc could force the issue by pointing to the
signs and demanding to use PAYG!

Paul

>>> To me this seems like a contradiction. The problem is that the
>>> Liverpool Street line is a London overground line, but it isn't a
>>> London Overground line. TfL should not have used "London
>>> Overground" to mean a small subset of what the words have meant
>>> for the last hundred years.
>>
>> Has it? I don't recall hearing 'overground' as a word meaning 'all
>> railway lines in London not operated by London Underground' until
>> very recently. Possibly i just didn't notice it. Has it really been
>> widely used in that sense?
>
> No, I don't think it has. In my experience, people used "railway" or
> "British Rail" or "main line" (even when talking about purely suburban
> railways)

Well I'm forty-four and I've been using and hearing others using the term
'overground' for as long as I can remember, and I've just asked my partner
and she says the same thing, and we are from different sides of London so it
isn't a localised thing. If I was travelling outside London I'd talk about
going by 'train' but within London I'd be as likely say 'overground' to
avoid the ambiguity 'train' or 'rail' causes.

> or the name of the BR/NR operator.

I think that depends a lot on your age. Having been brought up with British
Rail I still don't refer to the various operators that often, with the
exception of Thameslink/First Capital Connect.

>
> People certainly didn't talk about "London overground" even if they might
> possibly have used the word "overground".

I certainly agree with that.

Choosing London Overground makes 'one' seem like a sensible name.

G.