All posts filed under: Historical Maps

Historical Map: London Metropolitan Railway and Connections, c. 1930

June 15, 2012
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A fantastic old in-car map from London’s old Metropolitan Railway: the world’s first underground railway and the precursor to the modern London Underground. Today, former Metropolitan Railway tracks and stations are used by the London Underground’s Metropolitan, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly and Jubilee lines. I’m guessing this map is from around 1930 or so, as the Railway’s lines are substantially complete apart from the Stanmore extension out of Wembley Park, which opened in […]

Historical Map: Sydney Rail Transport System, c. 1970-1976

June 8, 2012
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Here’s another interesting planning map from Sydney, Australia, showing a vision for the future that never quite got there. If you look to the far centre right of the map, you can see the planned Eastern Suburbs line… including a never-built extension from the (now current) end of the line at Bondi Junction to Kingsford. There’s also an extra station at Woollahra in the section that did finally get built. It’s these details that allow […]

Historical Map: Sydney Suburban Rail Network, 1969

June 5, 2012
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Here’s an interesting map from my hometown of Sydney, Australia from around 1969. Unusually, it doesn’t display different services as separate coloured route lines: everything is shown as one uniform orange line. It also displays the distance from Sydney Central station (in miles), and the elevation (in feet) of each station. Non-electrified lines are shown as dashed lines. These odd features lead me to believe that this is a map for internal NSW Railways use, […]

Historical Map: Boston Commuter Rail Map, Mid-1980s

June 4, 2012
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Great old map of Boston’s extensive commuter rail network. I really like the way the subway lines are included to give scale to the whole network, and I especially like the square that the main interchange stations on the subway lines make — an understated design choice that gives a nice central focal point to the map. I suspect that the odd colours of the Orange and Red Lines are due to aging ink discolouration […]

Photo: British Rail Eastern In-Car Map

May 31, 2012
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A lovely example of British Rail’s house style of the 1960s and 70s, now residing at the East Anglian Railway Museum. This map is from between 1965 (the introduction of the “double-arrow” British Rail identity), and 1978 (when the “Eastern” component of the logo changed from sitting in an outlined box to a solid box like the British Rail text). Can anyone date it more definitively? Source: Deptford Draylons/Flickr

Historical Map: British Rail Greater London Network, 1965

May 17, 2012
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Here’s a fantastic map out of England in the mid-60s, showing British Rail service in the Greater London area. It’s almost staggering to think that a map this well drawn was created without the use of computers. I definitely recommend clicking through to the large image on Flickr to savour all the beautiful, crisp linework: this map is technically excellent. Have we been there? Yes, and I’ve used many of the great London terminus stations, […]

Historical Map: Metro de Madrid, 1981

May 9, 2012
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Having had a look at Madrid’s current map (2.5 stars), I thought we’d delve into the past and see what came before it. The first thing to notice is how much smaller the system was in 1981: only 10 Metro lines instead of 12 — and many of those are much shorter than now, and no light rail lines. Have we been there? No. What we like: A paragon of clean, functional transit map design. […]