Comment by hdgvhicv
1 day ago
The ELL was a tiny part compared to the NLL, Watford DC and Goblin and about the same size as the WLL.
The thing which TfL broggght was sprucing up the trains, adding staff to the stations, increasing reliability if I think frequency, and branding it so people considered it “new”.
Branding also underscores a thing that transit nerds would know but is not necessarily obvious to visitors or infrequent users - that these are just part of the same transit network and so there's no extra friction. You don't need a special ticket or whatever - an Overground train, just like London's Underground trains or buses or trams, obviously works with Oyster, it has the common fare system, if your journey involves a mix of modes that'll integrate smoothly and so on.
I don’t think oyster worked on overground when TfL took over, other than the special sections where there was co-acceptance (harrow-queens park, Richmond branch). Of course in those days most regular users had a travelcard.
Oyster, and later contactless, makes things far easier to travel. I’ve just been on a u-bahn and bus trip in Nuremberg, had to download an app to buy a ticket, no idea whether I got the right one or not.
Oh, I see, you mean maybe when it's "Silverlink" your Oyster might not work at a barrier and then maybe a month later it's "Overground" and now it works?
Maybe. There are definitely cases where the re-brand is accompanied with physical works that make access legal, but I couldn't find cases where those works change practical access. If I have an Oyster card, and I walk up to a station with no barriers and board a Silverlink train that "doesn't take" Oyster, it does work it just wasn't legal. A month later with new "Overground" branding, that's legal and they've installed a barrier-less validation terminal so I could and should tap it with the Oyster as I pass.
I looked for, but couldn't find, pre-Overground stations where there's a NR style gate line which is physically capable of reading Oyster, but Oyster is forbidden and so you can't enter until - with the re-branding - TfL turns on the Oyster mode. I think it's likely that did not happen because it just seems pointlessly annoying, but I can't prove it.
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