Sent my way on Twitter by Cameron Coy, this diagram of rail services radiating out from central Adelaide in South Australia isn’t anything special… except for the wonderfully and unashamedly late 1970s typography, with ITC Souvenir Bold deployed in all its curvaceous, tightly letter-spaced glory. I particularly like its use for the main Adelaide station, where the letterforms across the large station circle (intentionally?) evoke the famous London Underground roundel.

It’s interesting to note all the stations with coordinated bus service (that is, buses with services timed to coincide with the arrival and departure of trains); those within zones 1 to 5 even allow for a system transfer with a 40-cent transfer ticket – the two coach icons make this clear quite nicely. The blobby blue icon for station parking, however, might just surpass the Washington Metro’s old “boxy Volvo” as the ugliest parking icon ever.

A note on some station names. One wonders who thought abbreviating the word “Race” in “Cheltenham Race Course” as “Rce.” – thus saving no space whatsoever – was a good idea. And on the northern line out to Virginia lie the two charmingly named stations, “21.64 km” and “29.73 km”, denoting their distance from Adelaide and nothing more.

Our rating: Not an amazing map, but I love how redolent of the era it was made it is. Groovy! Three stars.

Source: Reddit