A definitive and objective ranking of London’s Tube/Overground line names
Based entirely on how much they annoy me personally.
Yesterday morning, I had things to write which prevented me from staring too long at the internet. Yesterday evening I was seeing a friend for dinner and, same. In between there were five solid hours in which the rumour and counter-rumour, the noises coming from within the Labour party and CCHQ, the turnout data and ill-informed analyses thereof had driven me so completely and utterly mad that multiple people no less addicted to their phones than I were telling me to go outside and (this is a quote) “touch grass”.
At time of writing we still don’t know whether this year’s London mayoral election will go down in history as one of the great polling upsets of all time. It feels probable that Labour’s mildly disappointing London mayor Sadiq Khan, who the polls had put around 20 points ahead of his actively ghastly Tory rival Susan Hall, will be elected for a third term - but we won’t know for sure until some time this afternoon.
So since we’re waiting, though, I’m breaking a personal rule. Normally, I won’t release anything from behind the paywall until it’s been at least two months, to give paying subscribers value for money. But since one of Sadiq Khan’s bigger achievements recently has been to name the London Overground lines, and since one of his staff once told me this was my doing, and since if he loses I’ll miss him, here’s my definitive ranking of London’s line names from early April.
May god have mercy on our souls.
22. IFS Cloud Cable Car
Okay, Transport for London (TfL) is broke, and most of the blame for this lies in the incompetence and malice of national government. Nonetheless there’s something intensely seedy about naming lines after companies for cash, not least the fact it means renaming them the minute a sponsorship deal runs out. (The switch from “Emirates Airline” has made the name less problematic but also, somehow, more depressing.) The only argument for not putting this one last I can think of is that it shouldn’t be on the list at all.
21. London Trams
I can’t decide if it’s more annoying now than when it was Croydon Tramlink (more specific, but also more limiting) or just Tramlink (too close to Thameslink, with which it interacts). But it remains the name of a mode, rather than a line, and also entirely colourless. Will look even weirder on the map once the London Overground has names.
20. Hammersmith & City
The decision to split this off from the Metropolitan Line in 1990 to give the route its own identity was the first change to the Tube Map I can remember, and the resulting excitement (a whole new colour!) is directly responsible for a sizeable chunk of my career and personality. Distressing to admit, then, that it’s definitely the worst name for a tube line. It’s too long; two-thirds of the line’s stations are in neither Hammersmith nor the City; and worst of all it’s one of three different lines that today connect the two areas. Hate it. Get rid. Re-christen it Grenfell.
19. Waterloo & City
Not quite as annoying as H&C, if only because it’s a decent stab at a literal description of the line and couldn’t apply to any of the others. (The platform signage at Bank literally said “City” until 1940.) But my god it’s dull. Only defence for it is that the only other name ever unofficially applied to it – “the Drain” – is obviously worse.
18. Victoria
One of three tube lines which pass through Victoria, which is annoying. Potentially confused with various national rail routes, which is really annoying. One of multiple lines named in a forelock tugging “Well the royals are basically apolitical, right?” kind of way, which is incredibly annoying.
But the most annoying thing of all is: they considered naming it the Viking line (Victoria-Kings Cross), then didn’t. WTF?
17. District
I mean, what the f*ck does that mean. Come on. Which district? It passes through dozens of bloody districts. The only reason it’s called that at all is because the company which built it was the Metropolitan District Railway, a name it chose in a transparent attempt to steal the Victorian equivalent of SEO from the Metropolitan Railway, so we all got stuck with it.
There’s also an argument that the District is really two different lines – one via the south side of the City, the other to Edgware Road – and that the latter should be renamed Wimbleware. Even if that happened, though, they’re just not going to change the first bit, because doing so would be expensive and confusing, and I’m probably the only person ever to bother complaining that it’s meaningless. Christ.
16. DLR
Like the trams, this is a mode, not a line. Not bad exactly, but ugly and the use of abbreviation mean it doesn’t even have “Docklands” in it any more. Aesthetics and clarity alike suggest splitting it into at least three lines: Maritime, Beckton and Silvertown? I’m sure TfL would love you to write in:
15. Suffragette
Bet none of you expected to get this far up the rankings before I hit one of the new names, did you? That just shows, IMHO, that you’re all in the pocket of Big Tube.
Anyway, clearly the worst of the new Overground names. The fight for votes for women wasn’t specific to either London or the line’s route. (The claim that the last surviving Suffragette Annie Huggett lived in Barking until her death, c1996, at the age of 103 feels like a pretty weak link.) Even leaving aside the whole suffragette/suffragist split, and the fact the latter deserve to be better known, naming an entire London transport route after a cause so broad feels like a bone thrown to feminism, the transport equivalent of that bit in Spaced when Daisy yells, “Girl power!” in a job interview.
(Important explanatory note for readers: I am a man.)
14. Circle
It’s not a circle, is it? It’s a bloody spiral. I was fine with it being a weird lumpy oval thing that somebody’s squidged at the eastern end, but since 2009 it’s not even been that, it’s been this sort of half-hearted spiral thing. Worse, it goes through Paddington twice at two different sets of platforms. Madness.
Again, we’re almost certainly stuck with it, but I still reserve the right to say that it’s shit.
13. Weaver
Bit half-hearted. Ostensibly chosen because it runs through districts, like Spitalfields, which housed the garment industry that was central to the experience of waves of immigrants (Huguenot, Jewish, Bangladeshi). Actually chosen at least partly, I suspect – given the weakness of this link, and the fact the line doesn’t actually stop at Spitalfields – because it runs past a park named Weavers Fields, and TfL got stuck. Not bad. Just... there.
12. Thameslink
Torn. On the one hand, it’s one word, which I like, and it sort of made sense as the only national rail route which connected places to the north and south of London, thus linking places on either side of the Thames. On the other hand, though: Eww.
(Is it strange, do you think, that I find bits of transport nomenclature that draw attention to function, rather than merely being geographical or symbolic, intensely ugly? This is basically my problem with Crossrail and Acton Main Line, too. Hmm, one for my therapist.)
Just scattering buttons like the following through this piece to remind you that you have the option to help pay for said therapist, and also read great content:
11. Lioness
One of the most mocked of the new Overground line names – who in a few years is going to remember England’s victory in the 2022 UEFA European Women’s Football Championship, let alone connect it to Wembley? But I find that I rather like it. It will encourage users to find out about some local history. Also it’s just pretty: one of those names for which you could imagine TfL introducing a little glyph on signage some day. I’m pro, even though I am ideologically opposed to both football and women.
10. Northern
Another one that’s clearly two lines – one through Bank, one through Charing Cross – masquerading as one. In some ways this is the most ridiculous name on the Tube map, since it goes further south than any other London Underground line, but
a) it does also serve large chunks of north London, to be fair, and
b) the perversity of calling the line to Clapham and Tooting “the Northern line” will never not delight me, sorry.
There has been talk of breaking the line into two, one route running from Battersea via Charing Cross to Edgware, the other from Morden via Bank to High Barnet and Mill Hill East. Such a change would allow more frequent services on each branch, but would require the complete rebuilding of Camden Town to accommodate the resulting foot traffic. If this ever does happen, I hope TfL renames the Battersea branch, which terminates some way north of the Moden one, as “the Southern Line”. For the LOLs, like.
9. Elizabeth
Bet you thought this was going to be lower, didn’t you? Me too, probably. But firstly, as noted, I’ve gone right off Crossrail. Secondly, a couple of years into the line’s operational life, I’ve been struck by how quickly it’s stopped feeling weird. Okay, it was a bit creepy that they named it after the Queen before she died… but, for all the royalism inherent in the choice, it soon just started feeling like the line’s name. It’s got a rhythm that means it’s impossible to mishear it as another line, and it abbreviates easily. It’s fine.
My main objection today is not to the name itself, which will come to seem no weirder than the fact large chunks of London and indeed the world are named after Queen Victoria. (Yes, I objected to this a few paragraphs back, but I contain multitudes, okay?) No, my current objection is to the fact TfL signage insists on referring to it as “Elizabeth line”. Why? They’re not making it part of the name (note the lack of capital L), yet they don’t feel the need to do this on any other line: the signs don’t say “Bakerloo line”, merely “Bakerloo”. If you’re going to apply human names to bits of transport infrastructure for royal reasons, commit, goddammit!
8. Mildmay
Not initially a fan, because I didn’t know the story of the Mildmay Mission’s role in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s or its resulting importance to the LGBT community: all I could see was that it was annoying that the line given the name didn’t actually pass through Shoreditch, the place that hospital was situated. But it does pass Mildmay Park, the place from which that hospital took its name, and the choice of name made me learn about that part of London’s history, and that feels like a good thing.
7. Liberty
We’re getting into the ones I uncomplicatedly like now.
The Royal Liberty of Havering, which covered Romford and Hornchurch (though not, oddly, Upminster), was a sort of medieval unitary authority, giving the area special rights. The word has since found its name onto local schools and shopping centres. And it’s probably, when attaching progressive labels to several other lines, not a terrible idea to throw a bone to the self-regard of the political right in London’s least London-y borough.
It’s certainly a damn sight better than the Havering or Emerson Park line. Also, if it needed a glyph, they could use a little bell.
6. Central
Another one we ended up with for historic reasons – it opened as the Central London Railway, which seems silly, given that all the tube lines serve central London – but since it’s the central east-west line, running between others to the north and south, I rather like it. Damn sight less stupid than “District” anyway.
This is where it gets controversial.
5. Jubilee
Look, I know, politically, I should dislike the fact the Fleet line was renamed after the Queen’s 1977 silver jubilee at the last minute: not only is this royalist, the line, in classic megaproject fashion, didn’t even open until two years after the festivities in question. (Today those celebrations look a bit rubbish anyway, because the queen lasted another 45 years and celebrated golden, diamond and platinum jubilees, too).
On the other hand, though, the line was only going to be named the Fleet Line because it’d, briefly, follow Fleet Street, which the line as built actually doesn’t. And Jubilee is a much prettier word. Plus it gave the line its colour. So.
4. Metropolitan
If we assume that half the purpose of line names is to encode information about the city’s history, then this one has to stay: the Metropolitan Railway, the first stretch of which opened from Baker Street to Farringdon Street in 1863, is not only the oldest part of the tube, but the oldest underground railway in the world anywhere. That alone would make the name worth keeping, but there’s more. “Metroland” gave its name to the ad campaign for railway suburbs developed alongside the line; those in turn were memorialised by poet John Betjaman.
Okay, a literal understanding of the phrase “metropolitan London” could refer to almost anywhere on the rail network in the south east of England. But this is too big a part of the story to change. It’s good.
3. Piccadilly
Okay, it only runs under Piccadilly for part of its length (not surprising, as Piccadilly isn’t that long). But if we assume the other half of the purpose of line names is to give them personality then, through sound alone, this one does it in spades. No chance, either geographically or rhythmically, of mixing this up with another line. There’s a reason jokes about the tube always take place on the Piccadilly Line. Two, if you count Cockfosters.
2. Windrush
It is, in some ways, problematic that the arrival of the Empire Windrush, the origin story for a specific community of non-white Britons, has come to stand in as the origin story for multicultural Britain as a whole. On the other hand, stories are most memorable when they are specific, cultural diversity is key to the identity of modern London, and it’s a great thing to memorialise those stories in the maps and infrastructure Londoners will use every day, not least because some of them will go on to look it up and learn about their city’s history as they do.
This is one of my local lines (I’m spoilt, I have six within a 10 minute walk), and it was passing its stations every couple of days and realising they’d soon be on the Windrush line that made me think: you know what? I like the new names. I think they’ve kind of nailed them. They’re a good thing.
All that, plus, it’s a memorable and unusual sounding word, too.
1. Bakerloo
Distinctive, informative, the sort of name you’d only find in London. And, best of all, it rhymes with “choo choo”. I think we can all agree that it is absolutely, definitively, unarguably the best one.
Now let us hear no more about it.
The self-promotion bit
The book bit: You surely know, by now, that my book A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps is available now. If you’ve not had a chance to pick up your copy though – which I am confident you definitely will – I summarised some of my key findings and favourite stories, such as the one about who Lady Mountbatten was shagging, for this weeks New Statesman column: “Borders are ridiculous. They may also be inevitable”.
Here’s a video of me talking about it for The Bunker podcast. (This was meant to be in Wednesday’s newsletter but I buggered up the link.)
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