Submitted by Paul, who says:

Attached is my re-draw of the Southern Electric Map, dated 1934, showing the electrified services (using 3rd rail top-contact 750v DC) serving South London. These were displayed in frames inside carriages, normally printed on heavy-grade card.

The temptation to correct some of the ‘issues’ of the original (the station names appearing over lines, odd spacing of lettering that doesn’t appear to be consistent and some rather interesting angles for the station names) was real, but I went with originality…

I believe this was one of the last designs to show the geographical nature of the network, before the tube-inspired topological maps took hold.

Was a real labour of love to redraw – but it’s a lovely piece to have on display.

Transit Maps says:

I managed to track down an image of the original map that Paul has so lovingly recreated and it looks like he’s done a really fantastic job of it. Perhaps the background is a little overly dark and the blue a little too aqua – but if Paul’s aiming for an aged, yellowed paper look then it’s actually quite effective.

I definitely agree with Paul’s view on alterations to these old maps when digitally recreating them. Generally, I’ll only ever fix egregious spelling mistakes and leave the rest pretty much as it was on the original. I find that you can actually learn quite a bit about design trends and typography of different eras if you do – compare the relatively loose letter spacing of the 1950s to the extremely tight letter spacing of the 1970s, for example.

Well done, Paul – this looks great and you should be proud of your efforts to recreate it so faithfully.