Back after a long hiatus, here’s my comprehensive guide to transit map-related gifty goodness for the transportation lover in your life this holiday season!
Jump to the categories: Prints and Posters | Books | Other Gifts & Sites
Transit Map Prints and Posters
My favourite category, filled with creative original designs and beautiful replica vintage maps from around the world – mainly made by local small businesses that you help support with every purchase.
First off, the shameless promotional plug: visit the Transit Maps store for my own original designs and some beautifully-restored vintage maps. Look out for sales around Black Friday and in the lead up to Christmas for some great deals.
My original maps | Vintage maps
Andrew Smithers (or “Mr. Mappy” to his friends) has a great selection of his rail maps for sale on his Redbubble site, including some variants of his superbly detailed UK rail diagram.
European-based cartographer Mike Hall has a store of beautiful maps to explore; we’re particularly enamoured with his collection of original vintage-styled rail maps – just stunning!
Jug Cerovic’s impressive portfolio of “INAT” metro diagrams continues to grow each year, and you can buy many of them on his Redbubble store.
I’ve always loved Daniel Huffman’s series of transit maps of North American rivers – so much so that some of them are the only “guest artist” prints available in the Transit Maps store, but he’s made quite a few more than those! Check them out here in his storefront.
Michael Calcagno has been making transit maps for a long time – see his valuable contributions to nycsubway.org’s historical map collection – but he’s only started selling his creations relatively recently. His Etsy store is full of fantastic maps, including a lot of Vignelli-style diagrams of different cities.
Andrew “vanshnookenraggen” Lynch’s vanmaps.com has a wide selection of vividly graphical line maps for many US transit systems, and his highly detailed and well-researched track maps for New York, Boston and Chicago are definitely worth a close look.
Based in the UK, Traincrew Graphic Design offers a small but good selection of replica train carriage maps, as well as some vintage travel poster recreations.
Well known to readers of the blog, Michael Tyznik has some great transit map designs in his Etsy store, including his excellent fantasy/pop-culture mash-ups, a truly wonderful future Chicago map, and a a new series of colorful posters listing all the services at various Japanese rail stations.
NEW! Jake Berman’s FiftyThreeStudio Etsy shop has some great maps, including his ever-expanding “lost subways” series.
NEW! Based out of Melbourne, AdMaps has some great Australia-themed maps, including a series of line maps of Melbourne’s extensive tram network.
Books
The next best thing to transit maps themselves is BOOKS about transit maps. Here’s a selection of some must-reads, many of which are in my personal library. Links provided are affiliate links to Amazon; Transit Maps may receive a small commission from any purchase you might make after following such a link.
Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World is still the number one reference book for transit map aficionados, and with good reason. Packed to the gills with great maps and diagrams from around the world, it’s easy to get lost in this book for hours.
While you’re at it, check out some of Mark’s other transit and transportation-related books: Railway Maps of the World, Airline Maps (with Maxwell Roberts), and London Underground by Design.
I’m happy to see that the superb Mr. Beck’s Underground Map by the late Ken Garland is still available – the seminal work on the man and his obsession with perfecting “his” diagram. The only book you need on the subject.
Similarly, Vignelli Transit Maps by Peter Lloyd remains the definitive work on this chapter of mapping New York’s extensive transit system, while Paul Shaw’s Helvetica and the New York City Subway System delves deep into the contemporaneous story of typography and design in the system. While somewhat lighter in tone, Subway by John Morris also features material related to maps and design for the subway system.
If you missed the first print run, Boston in Transit – a comprehensive history by Ward Maps’ Steven Beaucher – is currently taking pre-orders for a March 2023 re-release. I ordered this one immediately and can’t wait for it to arrive! Even better, there’s an accompanying print store website – also called Boston in Transit – where you can get prints of many of the maps, posters and pamphlets that are reproduced in the book. Perfect!
Finally, for our New Zealand readers, Can’t Get There From Here: New Zealand Passenger Rail Since 1920 by Andre Brett features maps by Sam van der Weerden, whose work has been featured on Transit Maps previously.
Other Transit Related Gifts and Sites
Last but not least, a round up of other gift ideas that don’t neatly fit into the first two categories!
Chris Arvin’s Transit Supply website has a range of adorable pins, stickers, magnets and more. Definitely the cutest l’il trains you’ll ever see!
Want a real-time LED train tracker map on your desktop? Head over to traintrackr.io and check out their range. Warning: not cheap, but oh-so-geeky!
Official merch for San Francisco’s BART at railgoods.com, including some name plates from decommissioned trains (currently on a waiting list, but more plates are expected to be made available).
Official merch for the MBTA at mbtagifts.com, including a whole bunch of different MBTA maps.
NEW! More official merch! Toronto’s TTC has a great online store, including skateboards with maps on them!
And finally, we can’t forget the store for the wonderful New York Transit Museum!
That’s the list for 2022! Drop me a line if you think we forgot anything, or you’d like your product added. Let’s make this as comprehensive a list as we can!