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.
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Thanks to Robert McConnell, who let me know that the map I featured in my last post is actually a modern digital map made by none other than Maxwell Roberts. Roberts states that he based his version of the map off one that Beck produced, unsolicited, in 1938 and that a copy of this version is in Ken Garland’s excellent book, “Mr. Beck’s Underground Map”. I own a copy of this book, so was a […]
Here’s something via Chris Applegate on Flickr, where Chris says: Finally put up and framed the gorgeous vintage Tube map I won in a competition yonks ago. It is gorgeous, but it’s not just a Tube map, nor is it anything I’ve ever actually seen before. It appears to be a Greater London Tube Map/main line railway diagram produced in a Beck-like style – a precursor to this 1988 “London Connections” map (May 2013, 3 stars) […]
