The London Overground

Today marks the sixteenth anniversary of the London Overground opening. Now an orange web on the Tube map, strands threading their way into boroughs such as Croydon, Enfield and Harrow, the railway system looked much smaller back in 2007. Here's the first Tube map when the Overground was represented. Here's the Tube map now. If you can ignore the further additions of light green, pink and purple stripes to the map, you can see just how large the Overground has got, with the railway having expanded just last year with Barking Riverside station opening - and the network's still expanding.

The Overground was initially an amalgamation of National Rail lines under the "Silverlink" moniker. There were two types of Silverlink railway, that of Silverlink Metro, operating services in and around London, and Silverlink County, where services operated outside of London. The County services were taken over by London Midland, now by West Midlands Trains, whereas the Metro services were taken under TfL ownership and rebranded into the London Overground network.

Overground's a cunning name for a London railway, don't you think? It sort of sounds like a foil to the Underground in a way, not least because large swathes of Underground railway is actually overground. This is even more pronounced when you realise the East London line, a former Underground line running from New Cross (Gate) up to Shoreditch, would eventually become part of the new network, not least as it means that at Whitechapel, the Overground's beneath the Underground. 

Marketing aside, the Overground was initially North London based, with Clapham Junction, Kew Gardens and Richmond initially the only stations south of the river. Otherwise, you could commute via exotic locations such as Kensington, Willesden and Holloway from the 11th November 2007. This was as part of railways which will soon be given official names by TfL, but which were (and are) known as the North London line (Richmond to Stratford), the West London line (Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction), the self-describing Gospel Oak to Barking line, and the Watford line from Euston to Watford Junction, the four northern-most stations initially outside of London's fare zones (of which only Watford Junction remains outside). One part of Silverlink Metro went unserved by the Overground - Stratford to North Woolwich - and this is now operated by the DLR.

At that time, the East London line was merely an awkward part of the Underground. Once part of the Metropolitan line as one of the oldest parts of the Underground (constructed in the 1860s), it had become an independent tube line by the 1980s, eventually becoming a familiar orange on the Tube map from 1990. It had always been an aim to extend the railway, which after many years of deliberation and planning, finally became approved by the government in 2001. The East London line would be extended by over a mile down south to Croydon as well as Crystal Palace, whilst plans would eventually be agreed for the line to run further north to Dalston. A new railway station would also open on Surrey Canal Road - something that has still not happened come 2023. The East London line shut on the 22nd December 2007 for construction to begin, a day that coincided with the closure of the now largely forgotten about Shoreditch station. Trains hadn't even been running there for a while, instead being replaced by a bus shuttle.

Come 2010, the line's orange returned to East London, with upgraded railways and different trains. Shoreditch got a railway station again, this time Shoreditch High Street, which acts as an odd Zone 1 station amonsgt many Zone 2 stations. The line only got longer by 2011 with an extension to Highbury and Islington. The network expanded further come 2012, when the South London line was reused to provide a link between Clapham Junction and New Cross via Peckham. The South London line is also used by Southern services which go on towards London Bridge, and it helped formed a large intra-London loop - Clapham Junction to Islington to Clapham Junction - which had been desired since the beginning of the network.

By 2015, the Overground became even larger as TfL took over services running from Liverpool Street to Chingford, Enfield and Cheshunt - by now, almost every corner of London had an Overground station. Even Romford, Emerson Park and Upminster got the Overground, albeit on a detached shuttle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed, only ten of London's thirty-two London boroughs lack an Overground station - I've included a map to highlight this (the outline is courtesy of Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlankMap-LondonBoroughs.svg) - the boroughs in pink (such as Westminster, Bexley and Sutton) don't have the Overground - those in orange do.

However, that orange exodus could change should plans be approved and new stations are built. Proposals have been suggested before to serve Thamesmead, a London suburb currently reliant on bus services (but those plans have shifted to focus on a DLR extension instead); Hounslow, Hillingdon and Barnet, all lying in Outer London, would be included along a new West London Orbital line, running from Hounslow to Hendon or West Hampstead via Brentford, Acton and a possible Crossrail-cum-HS2 link at Old Oak Common. It's currently in the planning stages, but TfL say it could open come the 2030s if everything goes well and funding is provided. Maybe they'll finally build a station along Surrey Canal Road? I can only be optimistic that there'll be another way to get to Millwall matches. (Indeed, the boroughs in yellow are where the Overground could arrive.)

Either way, after sixteen years, with multiple extensions, new stations, new trains and soon new names, the future's undeniably orange.