An odd little map from the Fall/Winter 1978 PATCO timetable brochure. While the Hi-Speed line itself is nicely shown in a lovely strong red, the absolute tangle of highways shown in New Jersey is somewhat bewildering, and really not that helpful.

The other bit of strangeness is the way that the map shows highways and towns all the way out to the Atlantic coast – some 45 miles past Lindenwold, the easternmost PATCO station. The map does note that you can transfer to “Seashore Buses” at Lindenwold, but doesn’t show any routes for them. Conrail trains actually ran from Lindenwold out to several coastal destinations just a few years prior, as this almost identical map from 1978 shows. Rather than completely redraw the map, PATCO just erased the tracks from the old artwork and reused it. Very pragmatic.

In 1989, the Atlantic City Line (re)opened, first with Amtrak trains, and then with the current NJ Transit commuter rail service.

Our rating: Sneakily repurposing an older map’s artwork may be thrifty, but it makes for a very off-centred, unbalanced map. Fully two-fifths of the area serves very little purpose. One-and-a-half stars.

Source: mpar21/Flickr