One of the things that makes London’s transport network so special – along with the world’s oldest underground railway, and the invention of the non-geographic metro map – is its use of language. A lot of transit systems rely on district names and street addresses when naming stations; almost all label routes with numbers, letters or colours. London, though, has Swiss Cottage and Elephant & Castle stations, the Jubilee and Bakerloo lines. It gives the network personality.

It always felt a bit alien, then, that an increasingly important chunk of the city’s transport system didn’t bother with any of this. The London Overground, launched in 2007 as a brand for former national rail routes, serves many parts of the capital neglected by the tube. Its half a dozen routes, though, have so far been shown on the map in a uniform orange, and are officially described in such thrilling terms as “the Watford line” or “the Stratford to Richmond/Clapham Junction route”.

This is not just antithetical to London’s whole approach to these things, it’s also a pain in the arse. If I ask a route-planning app to get me from the part of the East End where I live to the part of north London where I often work, it is likely to suggest two routes involving three Overground lines. I immediately know which routes it’s suggesting, because I am the sort of nerd........

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