Once hemmed in by old city walls, then by the Boulevard Périphérique, the Paris Métro has rarely ventured outside the city proper into the suburbs. That is about to change with the ambitious “Le Grand Paris” plans shown here. Extensions of the existing Métro Lines 11 and 14 will take them far out into the Île-de-France, while new Lines 15, 16, 17 and 18 will encircle the region with orbital routes. Extensions to the RER E and a comprehensive network of regional trams will complement the system. All this is planned to be completed in just 17 years’ time, by 2030.
An absolutely lovely official government map of Perth’s burgeoning tram network in 1920. The Western Australian state government had taken over the system from private operators just a few years prior to this. The alternating colours along the routes would seem to indicate fare segments, at a penny per segment. Five pence fare to Nedlands!
The map is beautifully drawn, and has two cleverly integrated insets to show the longer routes out to Osborne Park to the north and Victoria Park over the Swan River to the south.
Starting from the city of “Decisionville” in the “State of Accountability”, our commuter must make up his mind (Decisionville, get it?) as to which line to take: the “Great Celestial Route” to salvation, the “Way That Seemeth Right” that totally isn’t, or the ominous “Great Destruction Route” leading – predictably – to “The City of Destruction”.
Scenic detours can be had through charmingly named towns like Grumblemore, Lewd Castle, Crap Hollow and Treasondale. Perhaps a day out at Scandal Beach along the shores of the intriguingly shaped Beer Lake? Murder Gorge and Suicide Tunnel are probably best avoided, however.
The copy at the bottom left of the map reads:
“This unique map will make a lasting impression for good on all who study it. The names of states, towns, railroads, lakes, rivers and mountains are all significant. A copy of this map should be in every home, hotel, railroad station, and public place. It makes an interesting study for school children, both in the public and Sunday schools. It will cause many a one to leave the Great Destruction Route and finish his journey on the Great Celestial Route. Price 35 cents.”
Strangely, though, the map seems to indicate that there’s no way back to the Celestial Route from the other lines. Better make the right choice before you leave Decisionville!
The Liverpool Overhead Railway operated from 1893 to 1956, and was a unique example of an American-style elevated railway in the United Kingdom. It was the world’s first electric elevated railway and the first to use automatic signalling and electric signal lights. Serving Liverpool’s then thriving docks, it quickly earned the affectionate nickname, “The Dockers’ Umbrella”, as the elevated structure sheltered dock workers from the rain as they moved from dock to dock.
This attractive 1930s tourist brochure shows the route of the LOR, and also writes at length about the points of interest to be seen along the way. I definitely recommend clicking through to the large size on Flickr to see some of the best early 20th century British Imperial trade propaganda you’re ever likely to read. See also the rather lovely brochure cover here.
The railway suffered substantial bomb damage in World War II, and by the early 1950s was in a very poor state of repair. Unable to afford repairs, the operating company went into voluntary liquidation and the line closed in 1956. Dismantled shortly thereafter, very little trace of this interesting railway remains today.
With the removal of intercity train routes from the new Sydney Trains map, the question is – where did they go?
The answer: onto a new map of their very own! Aesthetically, it’s very similar to the Sydney map, part of what I understand is a major effort to unify all transit services that Transport for NSW provides. The layout of the lines is very clear and easy to understand, and having separate maps makes a lot of sense to me: the people who commute into Sydney on these Intercity lines have very different needs to those who use the main Sydney network. I’m especially pleased that the Hunter Line out of Newcastle is off the standard Sydney map, as it serves a completely separate urban area!
However, because of the long, linear nature of the routes, there’s a lot of empty space left on the map to fill with something… and I’m not sure that an amorphous “Blue Mountains” shape is the right approach. It’s highly simplified, but there’s some overly precise shapes in it: the triangular cutout to the west of Campbelltown looks particularly weird.
The simplified representation of the coastline also presents some problems. The area around Sydney looks good, although I do wonder if the tiny representation of Port Hacking is really necessary. The Hawkesbury River is fine as well, as it intersects the Central Coast Line and is generally considered to be the border between Sydney and the Central Coast region.
However, the representation of Lake Macquarie is both poorly handled (it actually has an outlet to the ocean, and is separated from it by land that’s less than 2 kilometres wide) and unnecessary. If it’s included to help reference stations to geography, then why not also include Tuggerah Lake near Tuggerah and Wyong stations, or Lake Illawarra near Port Kembla at the bottom of the map? The (completely imaginary) spit of land that the Port Kembla branch of the South Coast line currently sits on just looks weird. Even in a stylised map like this, geography should be included to inform the user, not to simply fit around your route lines.
Again, I’ll reserve final judgement until October 20th when the map is officially released, but this map is currently a bit of a mixed bag. The route lines look great, the background is less inspiring.
Sent my way by Nick Stylianou, this is supposedly the new Sydney Trains system map that will be released concurrently with a whole slew of timetable changes on October 20th.
I’ll reserve my judgement until I see the final map – this may be a working draft with final amendments still to be made – but there are certainly some radical changes from the current map (Sep. 2012, 3.5 stars), not the least of which are the rebranding of lines as “T” numbers and the abolition of the Northern Line and Inner West lines as separate entities. It certainly feels weird to look at a Sydney train map without a Red Line: I spent much of my youth travelling from Epping for school and design college!
As a result, almost half the map is now dominated by one route colour: the yellow T1 line now has five separate terminus stations! Meanwhile, the tiny little Carlingford line still gets to be blue. I also feel that the terminating stations throughout the map could be referenced simply with their “T-number” designation, rather than redundantly repeating the entire line name. Inconsistently, this approach is abandoned where there’s no space – Olympic Park only gets a “T7”, and Lidcombe has no “T3” at all.
I’m not a fan of the twists that the T3 Bankstown Line has to take between Dulwich Hill and Birrong, and while I appreciate the effort taken to stylise the harbour and coastline, I feel it could be more elegantly done to match the rest of the map better.
On the positive side, the removal of intercity services gives the map much more room to breathe, and spacing of stations on the T4 Illawarra Line is now much more consistent with the rest of the map. Future works have been integrated into the map, so it’ll be able to grow with the system.
Other notes: the Metro light rail line has been removed from the map (not sure if that’s good or bad), and Homebush station is now being shown as a spur of the main T2 line… something to do with service patterns from there?
I’ll be watching for the final map with interest, that’s for sure!
The minor additions are the lengthening of two names on the Red Line to later versions – “Kendall” becomes “Kendall/MIT” and “Charles” is now “Charles/MGH”. No problems there. The real eye-opener is the addition of the Red Line extension past Harvard to Alewife. The sticker used has discoloured relative to the rest of the map, so the amendment is very easy to spot.
Now, this extension was fully open in 1985, so let’s date the additions to then. The rest of the map still dates from 1967, so huge parts of it are now horribly out of date. Green Line “A” branch to Watertown? Closed in 1969. Orange Line Charlestown Elevated to Everett? Demolished in 1975. Nothing shown for the Braintree branch of the Red Line, which was well and truly open for service by 1985.
The southern leg of the Orange Line – the Washington Street Elevated – is still accurate for this time period, as it wasn’t torn down until 1987. And we’ll give the “E” branch extending to Arborway and “Washington” station the benefit of the doubt: they both changed in 1985 as well. Still, this map must have been totally confusing for anyone trying to actually use it to get around!
However, this map continues a fine Boston tradition of adding information to old system maps: see here and here.
Enough of all this talk about the new DC Metro map; here’s another old one for you – and this one’s a bit of an oddity. An inspection of the southern leg of the Green Line shows that the terminus was then planned to be at Rosecroft, not Branch Avenue. The preceding station shown, St. Barnabas Road, was also never constructed
The photos of the map were sent to me by Mark Greenwald, who says that these maps were on trains for less than a year – presumably because of the numerous legal issues surrounding the eventual routing of the Green Line, which you can read more about on Wikipedia.
Another oddity – Union Station is still labelled as “Union Station – Visitor Center” long after the ill-fated National Visitor Center closed its doors in 1978.
An old postcard showing a colorised aerial photo of Seattle and the Puget Sound. Points of interest and the ferry routes of the era (pre-Washington State Ferries, which only commenced service in 1951) have then been added to the image.
It’s these ferry routes which allow us to date this charming postcard to somewhere between 1935 and 1942. The little Fletcher Bay to Brownsville ferry route (centre left on the photo) only operated between 1924 and 1942, while the Colman Dock (Seattle) to Manchester route only ran after 1935, when the old eastern terminus dock at Alki Point washed out.
Source: alanp_photo/Flickr (link no longer active)
Here’s a very pleasant map that shows the “Akvabusy” water transportation routes in St. Petersburg, Russia, which were introduced only a few years ago in 2010. The service only runs from the end of May until October each year as the city’s rivers and canals all freeze over in winter. The fleet – as shown at the bottom of the map – consists of everything from small 12-seat water taxis all the way up to 120-seat hydrofoils that can reach speeds of 65km/h.
The map itself is very clearly laid out and makes good use of 30/60 degree angles to represent the islands and canals of the city. This does make the one really odd angle – on the blue Central Line to the east of the Summer Garden stop – stand out like a sore thumb, however. I’m also not sure that the little “flick” in the red Kurortnaya line as it nears Kronstadt (in the map’s inset) is really necessary.
The map also has other useful information: the distance to nearby Metro stations is marked where appropriate (although 1,100 metres – over a kilometre! – is hardly a “short walk”), as are the names of the city’s famous bridges, both of which are great for general orientation and getting around.
My one main problem with this map is that the type is tiny and very hard to read. All the iterations I’ve seen are online bitmap graphics with a maximum width of just 1000px or so. A lot of the type, especially the English subtitle labelling, is almost impossible to make out at that resolution.
Our rating: Looks good, contains useful information, but teeny-tiny type lets it down somewhat. Three stars.
Source: Transport in St. Petersburg website – link no longer active
