All posts filed under: Historical Maps

Submission – Official Historical Map: MBTA Map in Chinese, c. 1985

January 30, 2014
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Submitted by Randy Wong, who says: The MBTA map in Chinese characters. These used to be posted at the Orange Line Chinatown T-stop, and also at a few of the other lines that intersected/were near Chinese speakers. There are lots of Chinese who live near Malden, Oak Grove, Chinatown, Forest Hills, Quincy, and Quincy Center T-stops, though I don’t recall which stops actually had Chinese T maps. Transit Maps says: Nice localisation of the classic […]

Historical Map: Tactile/Braille Map of the Washington DC Metro, 1988

January 24, 2014
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A tactile map designed by J.W. Wiedel for the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education. Tactile surfaces on the map reveal information about the Metrorail system for vision-impaired users, including whether stations have side or centre platforms (more information than can be found on the official map) and transfer stations. It’s hard to make out, but braille text is also included for major stations and areas. Each route line also appears to have a […]

Historical Map: The Plan of Chicago – Proposed Arrangement of Railroad Stations, 1909

January 10, 2014
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A plate from the hugely influential 1909 Plan of Chicago (also known as “the Burnham Plan” after its primary author, the renowned architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham) showing proposed amendments and additions to the railroads of the city. The thin red lines show main line railroads, which were going to be rerouted to two mega-stations to the south and west of the downtown area. To facilitate movement between these stations, an ambitious plan of subterranean […]

Historical Map: “Blue Guides Short Guide to Paris” Paris Métro Map, 1951

January 9, 2014
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An excellent effort to portray the complexities of the Métro with just two colours. A  wide array of different dashed lines allows 15 lines (the 14 Métro lines plus the Ligne de Sceaux) to be differentiated relatively easily. As a guide for tourists, the map wisely concentrates on the central part of Paris, leaving the stations further out to be listed in neat little call out boxes. Source: 217lemurs/Tumblr Paris Metro map from the inside cover […]

Historical Map: Tokyo Metro Map on a Passnet Fare Card, 2005

January 8, 2014
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Certainly solves the problem of having to read a map over someone’s shoulder on a crowded train (or resorting to wearing one on your tie). Passnet was a magnetic-stripe fare card in use in the Kanto region from 2000 to 2008: it’s since been replaced by the contactless Pasmo card. Source: Rob Ketcherside/Flickr

Historical Map: Ghost Stations of the London Underground

January 3, 2014
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The Underground has been around so long, and its famous Diagram so ingrained in our heads, that we tend to think of it as an immutable object: always the same, never changing. That’s absolutely not so, as this fantastic reworking of the Tube Diagram shows. Shown here are the 40-plus “ghost stations” of the London Underground – stations that once existed as part of the “Tube”, but no longer do, for varying reasons. Some stations […]

Historical Map: New York City’s Pneumatic Tube Mail System

January 3, 2014
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Not a transit map in the usual sense of carrying passengers, this map instead depicts a network that conveyed mail at speeds of up to 35mph under the streets of New York from 1897 to 1953 (barring a small gap during World War I when it was shut down to conserve funds for the war effort). This map probably shows the system at its height pre-WWI, with over 27 miles of tube. Even then, the […]

Historical Map: AC Transit Route Map, 1967

December 26, 2013
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Sweet illustrated map of bus routes in the East Bay, including a multitude of transbay services: I count 16 crossing the Bay Bridge to San Francisco! As with all maps of this ilk, the fun part is finding all the little details in the illustrations that are liberally scattered throughout (My favourite is probably the sailor who is busily chatting up the cute nurse at the top centre of the map). The subtle painted texture […]

High-Resolution Scan of 1988 Amsterdam Transit Map!

December 19, 2013
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Have I ever mentioned how much I love my readers? I posted about this map last Monday, praising its visual clarity, but also lamenting the fact that I didn’t have a higher resolution version of it to really savour the details. Almost immediately, I got a submission from Alain Lemaire, who generously sent me full high-resolution scans of the whole map from his personal collection. He provided me with four separate scans, one for each […]

Historical Map: New Orleans Streetcar Trackage Map, 1945

December 18, 2013
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A neat little map from the July, 1945 edition of the Electric Railroader’s Association’s Headlights magazine – both the association and the publication are still going strong today. The map shows all the tracks in the Big Easy at the time, including those that were in usable condition but not currently utilised (indicated by a hash across the track). Routes are indicated by letters that were keyed to the text of the original article – […]