Unearthed on Twitter (It’ll always be Twitter to me, no matter what Elon says) by @crossing_lights, this is quite an extraordinary find.

Long-time readers may have seen the 1939 version of this diagram (and the digital recreation that I made). Here’s the thing: the general consensus has always been that this was a one-off attempt at something in the style of H.C. Beck’s newfangled London Underground diagram. I seem to recall that one theory even had it that the 1939 diagram was produced for visiting dignitaries from London Transport and was never even seen by the general public. Jay Foreman’s “Unfinished London” video on the history of the Tube Map (Part 2) even suggests that Beck himself drew it (to which I say, “Poppycock!”)

But yet, here’s this later version of the map – even though all we have of it is a black and white archival reference photo, not the actual printed piece – which shows that there was at least one further edition/revision. I’d say this is a facsimile of a printed brochure, as there seems to be evidence of a fold line running down the page between Penrith and Kingswood. Careful examination shows considerable differences between this version and the 1939 one.

The most obvious of these is that this diagram is properly typeset (using Gill Sans throughout) instead of the neat handwritten labels from the 1939 version. This actually presents quite a few problems: whereas the handwritten labels could be subtly adjusted in size and width to squeeze longer names in, the typeset labels are all the same size and are pretty unforgiving, layout-wise. The label for Macdonaldtown station now takes up so much room that the designer was left with no choice but to angle the labels for Stanmore, Lewisham and Ashfield (starting a long tradition for angled labels on the Sydney rail map!). Wentworthville has been flipped to the other side of its line simply because the label would run into the Carlingford line if it was on the other side! There’s quite a few places where the spacing of the labels is pretty unsatisfactory: Merrylands is way too close to Granville, for example, and there’s plenty more if you look. However, they did fix the label at Kirkham on the Camden Line!

The parallel lines heading south from Sydenham have been redrawn poorly, with the section from Sydenham to Kogarah being much further apart than from Carlton to Hurstville. Very curiously, the section of the City Circle from Wynyard through Circular Quay (here, just “Quay”) to St. James has been drawn in by hand – perhaps just an addition to this archival print? St. James itself is still denoted by a terminal tick, as this section was very much still under construction in 1940 (Circular Quay station finally opened in 1956!).

The archival records for this map simply and vaguely date this diagram as “pre-1962?”; my dating of c.1940 is because Dumbleton station has been renamed Beverly Hills (August 1940), the Ropes Creek line hasn’t opened (March 1942), and I definitely think that this revision would have been produced fairly shortly after the original 1939 version.

Update: This “No. 2” map has been definitively dated to 1953 in this Twitter post by @crossing_lights, which shows the obverse side of the pamphlet from the NSW Government Archives. Though it’s been permanently glued down so that the map is hidden, adjusting the histogram in Photoshop clearly reveals this diagram on the other side. Quite remarkably, that means 14 years have elapsed between the 1939 “No. 1” version and this one. This does explain the omission of the Kurrajong Line from this edition, as it closed in 1952. It therefore seems probable that the Ropes Creek line, with its limited passenger service, was deemed too unimportant to show on the diagram.

Our final word: A hitherto unknown second attempt at a “Beck-style” diagram for the Sydney rail network. Like its predecessor, it’s not entirely successful, but it’s fascinating to know that it even exists!

Source: Museums of History NSW