All posts filed under: Historical Maps

Historical Ad: Swissair “European Rapid Transit System” Poster, c. 1980s(?)

May 22, 2015
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Sent my way by long-time correspondent, Kyril Negoda. I’m not entirely sure of the vintage of this, as the archive it resides in covers the entire period from 1980–2000, and none of the images have dates attached to them. There’s definitely an early 1980s vibe to it, though – mainly from the tightly kerned Futura Bold heading at the top. I’ve seen transit map-styled airline maps before (here and here, for example), but this one […]

Submission – Historical Map: 1979 New York Subway Map

May 20, 2015
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Submitted by peopleneedaplacetogo, who says: This, from 1979, is the first published version of the now-familiar Michael Hertz Associates-designed New York Subway map, which replaced the (in)famous diagrammatic Vignelli map of the early 1970s.  While most of the design decisions are still reflected in the subway map today, it’s interesting to see what’s changed over the intervening 35 years.  The 1979 map is somewhat less geographically distorted, the distinction between express and local services is […]

Submission – Passenger Rail in New South Wales at its Maximum Extent by VoomMaps

May 18, 2015
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Submitted by the creator, who says: This map I created presents the NSW rural rail passenger network at its maximum extent in the CityRail style. The stations and lines that no longer provide passenger service (or have been disused completely) are greyed out – with the vast majority of stations and lines now falling into this category. Transit Maps says: This is great work, simultaneously showing NSW’s rail network as it currently exists (solid colours, […]

Submission – Historical Map: Melbourne Tramways of WWI

May 8, 2015
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Hi Cam, Adam from the Melbourne Tram Museum here. Would love to get your thoughts on this! This is my first map done from scratch. We’ve recently launched our special exhibition named Tramway Anzacs, which tells the story of the 538 tramway employees who volunteered for military service in World War 1. As well as sharing their fascinating stories (including a guy who went from being a Cable Tram Gripman at Port Melbourne depot to fighting alongside Lawrence of […]

Historical Map: 1968 WMATA Metrorail Promotional Map

May 4, 2015
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Part of a promotional brochure discovered by Reddit user Globalwrath while cleaning his grandmother’s estate, here’s a fascinating look at the early pre-construction history of Metrorail. Much of the actual current system is represented fairly well as the “Authorized Basic System” (thin black lines) and “Adopted Regional System” (thick black lines) with at-grade sections represented by pink lines instead. Station names are obviously tentative (Pooks Hill? Weapons Plant?), but the alignments are very familiar. Of perhaps more […]

Historical/Unofficial Map: SF Muni Frequency Map, 1982 by Dennis McClendon

April 15, 2015
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Sent my way by Dennis, who says: Today’s offering is spurred by news of a new Muni map showing frequency of service. Here’s the one I created for personal amusement in 1982. As you can see, the technology was a bit more primitive: Rapidograph technical pens, a calligraphy pen, and crepe-paper tape on tracing paper.  The rest of the page (of a visitors guide I made for friends) was typewritten. Transit Maps says: Nice and simple – […]

Historical Map: Rapid Transit Plan for the Metropolitan Seattle Area, 1970

April 4, 2015
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A look at another stalled attempt to get rapid transit up and running in Seattle, this time from 1970. A lot of the proposed alignments look very familiar, but they are often constrained by Seattle’s difficult geography. I see that they were thinking of running rapid transit over the I-90 floating bridge – quite the engineering feat even now, let alone over 40 years ago. Even now, it’ll be the first light rail track travelling […]

Rail Services of the Bay Area, September 1937 by David Edmondson

March 26, 2015
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David, who runs The Greater Marin blog, has created this absolutely superb modern transit diagram version of rail services in the Bay Area in 1937. He’s used a contemporaneous railway timetable as his main source of information, so it seem to be pretty accurate, although he’s still seeking final feedback about the map’s content before finishing the project up. Stylistically, the map quite obviously borrows from Massimo Vignelli’s New York subway map, complete with black […]

Photo: Layer Upon Layer of Tube Map, 2008

March 25, 2015
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Great photo of a old and weather-worn Tube Map, taken at White City tube station. If you look closely, you can see that more than one layer of map is visible in certain sections, giving sort of an archaeological cross-section of different eras (See the doubled-up interchange station symbols at Euston for a good example). The most visible map seems to date from the early 1970s as it shows the Highbury branch of the Northern […]