Submitted by Andy, who says:

Hi, I recently got a bit over-fascinated and nostalgic about the old tramways network of Edinburgh and decided it would be fun to plot out a schematic routemap of the old system as it never quite was at some point in the late 1940s. I also had a little bit of fun trying to make it look like it just might have come out of the Corporation Tramways Department, even though they were never keen on branding much beyond the corporate colours of madder and white, the city crest and later on a rather crude “ECT” logotype (which to the best of my knowledge actually applied to Edinburgh City Transport, as it was renamed after the tram network was run down). They never actually issued a schematic map, they were quite topographically faithful. I’ve based the style loosely on Beck’s earlier designs. It’s mainly 90 degrees, but with a 30 degree added for parts of Leith which is geographically fairly correct. I feel this helps identify Leith as an area in its own right, and makes the thing a little bit more interesting, and was a fun challenge to draw. It also meant I could get away with a few non-right angles in other parts of the map to make things fit.

Given my real drive to produce this was to highlight just how much public transport has been lost in Edinburgh, I added the 1950s British Railways suburban network in too. It also meant I wasn’t hugely concerned about how difficult or otherwise it would be to actually use the map to get around if you could travel back in time to 1951!

I borrowed the idea of the daisy rings of route numbers along the way from genuine old ECT maps, and also faithfully maintained the complex system of denoting the service termini but making the reader work the actual route out for themselves by tracing along the lines looking for the correct numbers. There were a number of circular/figure-of-8 routes that had no real terminus as such, so I have indicated the main noted destinations. I’ve also included the colour lighting system that was used to help passengers identify the correct tram at night and in the notorious “Auld Reekie” smog of Edinburgh.

There are a number of geographic compromises taken to fit it to the page i.e. the right-hand line heading down the page in reality was a fairly straight E-W line along the coast.

Last, but not least, I have invented the stops for myself by placing the logical main streets neighbourhoods and landmarks along each route.

Transit Maps says:

Andy, I love this! 

It might depict a “perfect” system that – as you say – never quite existed, but it works wonderfully well as an evocative period piece. Everything – the sombre colours, the typography, the lovely rings of route numbers, the ECT monogram and even the nicely understated “old paper” texture – combine to make this quite a lovely bit of work.

There’s lots of detail to pore over as well, especially that ridiculously dense British Rail network. I particularly like the detailed explanation of the colour lighting system, which is a fascinating little solution to a problem. It initially seems quite complicated, but I guess you really only had to remember your route’s set of lights, not all of them!

If you’re not already, you should definitely try and sell prints of this map, because I think they’d be quite popular!