All posts tagged: 1978

Historical Map: Adelaide Metropolitan Rail Transport System, c. 1978

January 15, 2018
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Sent my way on Twitter by Cameron Coy, this diagram of rail services radiating out from central Adelaide in South Australia isn’t anything special… except for the wonderfully and unashamedly late 1970s typography, with ITC Souvenir Bold deployed in all its curvaceous, tightly letter-spaced glory. I particularly like its use for the main Adelaide station, where the letterforms across the large station circle (intentionally?) evoke the famous London Underground roundel. It’s interesting to note all […]

Historical Map: Subway-Surface Lines, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1978

September 22, 2017
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Here’s a great late-1970s diagram that I haven’t seen before of Philadelphia’s subway-surface trolley lines. From the looks of things, this might well have been a strip map within the trolley cars themselves. The subway-surface lines are given full prominence here, with the rest of Philly’s rapid transit rail system represented by very thin route lines mainly confined to the right third of the map. The five trolley routes are treated very diagrammatically, each following […]

Historical Maps: Prague Metro Book, 1978

June 28, 2016
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After I posted about this fantastic 1978 book celebrating the Moscow Metro, reader Martin Vrba let me know that he had a very similar contemporaneous book about Prague’s Metro, and was kind enough to send along some photos. Of particular interest is the first map, which shows projected extensions to the 1978 system (shown as solid lines) all the way up to 1990. There’s a few differences, but it’s basically very similar to the system […]

Historical Map: Hong Kong MTR “Modified Initial System”, c. 1978

July 17, 2015
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Here’s a fantastic old map of the first segment of Hong Kong’s now extensive rapid transit system. The original source dates the map to 1978, which seems reasonable to me – the route was well under construction at that time, with the segment from Kwun Tong to Shek Kip Mei opening in October 1979. The route was extended to Tim Sha Tsui in December of that year, and the initial section was completed in February […]

Historical Map: San Diego “Park Line” Bus Route Map, June 1978

October 1, 2013
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Looks like tightly-spaced Avant Garde was totally in vogue in 1978 (see also this Portland, Oregon bus map). This is a charmingly naive little map, complete with scratchy pen and ink drawings of points of interest, a lovely ornate north pointer (another 1970s typeface with some great swashes!) and an adorable little green hand pointing at the downtown inset. It even clearly shows all relevant street names and interchanges with other routes. What’s not to […]

Historical Map: TriMet Bus System Map, Portland, Oregon, 1978

September 27, 2013
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Not much use for route planning: this map was really made just to show how the routes that ran into the city centre were grouped into geographic regions and denoted by a colour and an icon. While stops along the transit mall are now marked with boring old letters, back then these cheery and oh-so-1970s symbols guided you to the bus stop you needed. Also very 1970s: the tightly-kerned Avant Garde typeface. Source: TriMet’s “How […]