All posts filed under: Historical Maps

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 […]

Submission – Historical Map: Trams and Buses of Brussels, Belgium, 1958

March 20, 2015
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Submitted by Thierry. A very stylish diagrammatic map of tramways (coloured lines) and bus routes (dotted black lines). This city’s historic centre is shaded grey, while the site of Expo 58 (or the Brussels World’s Fair) is given much prominence to the top left of the map. There’s a lovely economy of line in this map: everything serves a purpose and there’s a definite minimalist clarity in the design. Quite lovely.

Historical Map: Gothenburg Tramways, January 1966

March 16, 2015
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An pleasant mid-century diagrammatic tram (and bus) map for the Swedish city of Gothenburg. The two major points of interest for me are the nice little turnaround loops at the ends of each tram line (everyone who’s ever ridden a tram would instantly understand that), and the interesting “lightning bolt” symbols used to indicate free transfers between stops that have some distance between them. (A quick Google Translate of the legend for that symbol gives “Connects […]

Project: 1939 Map of Sydney Railways, Digital Recreation

March 9, 2015
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If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then H.C. Beck must have been blushing when this diagram of railway services in Sydney, Australia was produced in 1939. Designed just six years after Beck's famous London Underground diagram first appeared, it mimics the original's style almost perfectly. As scans of this map on the Internet had quality issues, I decided to redraw it in Adobe Illustrator from scratch.

Submission – Historical Map: SEPTA High Speed and Commuter Rail System, 1976

March 6, 2015
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Lovely little simplified network map that shows the SEPTA network in the mid-1970s, when commuter rail service was provided by the Reading Company and Penn Central… hence the two separate Chestnut Hill stations in the network (now denoted as East and West). Although the two systems are noted separately in the legend, there’s very little – if any – difference in the way they’re depicted on the map, although each line is labelled with its […]

The Warriors’ Subway System

March 5, 2015
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Via: cuttingroomflaw: The map of the New York subway system that featured in The Warriors was  replaced in the same year that the film was released, 1979. The map seen in the film was designed by Massimo Vignelli and was first introduced by the Metropolitan Transport Authority in 1972. “But many New Yorkers were outraged by what they saw as the misrepresentation of their city, while tourists struggled to relate Mr. Vignelli’s design to what […]

Historical Map: General Railway Development to 1985, Melbourne, Australia (1969)

March 5, 2015
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Submitted by John Mullany via email. Here’s an interesting rail planning map from 1969, presumably produced in association with the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan. It outlines all the improvements planned for Melbourne’s metropolitan rail system, including a whole bunch of new branches as shown in blue. According to the map, the works depicted were to be completed by 1985. Fast forward to 2015 – some 30 years past that deadline – and only the City […]

Historical Map: Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Metro, Russia, 1973

March 4, 2015
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A curvaceous, minimalist diagram. Notably mainly for the strangely muted colour scheme (yellow, brown and purple?) and the interesting interchange station symbols, which make things very clear by showing two arrows pointing in opposite directions. Visually, I like the way that the diagram makes use of overprinting where the route lines overlap. Update: I’ve since found out that this map is a small inset on a much larger geographical map of bus services in Leningrad, […]

The History of the New York Subway as a GIF

February 27, 2015
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A fun little GIF from Appealing Industries that shows the construction of the modern New York Subway in sequence. I’d really like it to be just a little slower, and have a year clock somewhere. Bonus points would have been awarded for showing the construction and eventual demolition of the elevated lines as well. Still nicely done, and almost mesmeric after a while. Compare with this GIF of the Boston “T”. Source: Appealing Industries website […]