All posts filed under: Historical Maps

New Project/Work-in-Progress – Historical Map: Streetcar Lines of Portland, Oregon, 1920

July 23, 2016
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Despite Portland once having one of the largest streetcar networks in the United States, finding reliable, empirical information about it is surprisingly difficult. Books about the history of the streetcar – like Richard Thompson’s series of books or John Labbe’s Fares Please! – tend to be more photographs and captions than exhaustive detail, internet sources are incomplete and at times contradictory, and even contemporaneous sources are frustratingly incorrect. A much-referenced Pittmon map of streetcar lines […]

Historical Map: Randwick/Coogee Buses (370, 372, 373, 374), Sydney, c. 1987

July 14, 2016
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A fairly bare-bones map showing the buses from the CBD and Central Station through Randwick and Coogee. It’s notable mainly for the inset that shows the service pattern in the city before the opening of the pedestrianised Pitt Street Mall (the main map shows the routing after the Mall’s opening). The Mall is now such an integral part of downtown Sydney that it’s sometimes hard to believe that it once wasn’t there. This map also […]

Submission – Historical Map: BMT Nassau Street Line by Renzo Picasso, c.1930 (?)

June 29, 2016
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Submitted by Casira Copes, who says: This is an image done by Renzo Picasso, the late Italian engineer and architect. He specialized in urban design and transit drawings, which I thought might be interesting for your blog! I’m currently working at the Archivio Renzo Picasso in Genoa, Italy where our goal is to expose his work to more people. He was not very well-known in his lifetime, but his drawings are pretty fascinating! He did […]

Historical Maps: Prague Metro Book, 1978

June 28, 2016
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After I posted about this fantastic 1978 book celebrating the Moscow Metro, reader Martin Vrba let me know that he had a very similar contemporaneous book about Prague’s Metro, and was kind enough to send along some photos. Of particular interest is the first map, which shows projected extensions to the 1978 system (shown as solid lines) all the way up to 1990. There’s a few differences, but it’s basically very similar to the system […]

Historical Maps: Australian Interstate Passenger Rail Schematics, November 1983

June 21, 2016
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Here’s a couple of neat timetable/route diagrams for Interstate passenger rail services in Australia back in 1983. The first shows westbound services from Sydney, the other shows the corresponding return journeys. Differing rail gauges and immense distances have always made interstate rail travel a difficult prospect in Australia, hence the paucity of services even 30-odd years ago (only three Sydney-Melbourne trains a day and just one daily Sydney-Brisbane service). Source: Image 1 and Image 2 […]

Historical Map: Washington, DC Streetcar Trackage as of August 1958

June 16, 2016
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A handsome hand-drawn map of the entire D.C. Transit streetcar network from August 1958, less than four years before the system closed entirely. The map was drawn by Charles Wagner, who was an active member of the Washington, DC chapter of the Electric Railway Historical Society in the 1950s, an august body that still exists to this day. Source: Discover DC History archive (link no longer active)

Historical Map: Croydon Tramlink, 2000

June 10, 2016
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All the talk lately is of Tramlink’s inclusion on the London Rail Services Tube Map, but here’s a look at an early map from shortly after the system opened as the Croydon Tramlink in May 2000. Interestingly, Johnston Sans is only used for the Tramlink logo and the prominent Travelcard Zone information: Gill Sans has been employed throughout the rest of the map. Of course, Tramlink wasn’t really part of the London Transport family at […]

Historical Map: Proposed Los Angeles Metro Rail Project and Station Locations, 1983

May 18, 2016
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Taken from a Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), this map shows the then-preferred alignment for what would eventually become the LA Metro Red Line. The FEIS called for an 18.6 mile alignment, all underground, with 18 stations. The cost in 1983 dollars was projected to be $2.47 billion (or around $5.88 billion in today’s money). An alternative called for an alignment with some aerial sections for $2.41 billion, while […]

Historical Map: Metro de São Paulo Linha Norte-Sul, c. 1973

May 13, 2016
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Before it became Linha 1, the São Paulo Metro’s first line was simply called the North-South Line after its general alignment. Although the photographer on Flickr dates it to 1973 (the year before opening), the map actually seems to show the route built out to its 1978 extent, just before the opening of the Red Line 2 in 1979.  The line extends as far north as Santana (opened 1975), and the 1978 fill-in station at […]