All posts tagged: 1981

Submission – Historical Map, Vienna Rapid Transit Diagram, 1981 (Digital Recreation by Patrick Cipot)

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Submitted by Patrick, who says: This is Vienna’s Rapid Transit Diagram (Schnellverbindungsplan – literally “Quick Connections Map”) from September 1981. I found it hanging in a museum train a few years ago and decided to recreate/digitalize it in March of this year. The diagram should be one of the first renditions in this style, as the U2 was only opened in 1980 which made the previous style obsolete – it is in fact likely the […]

Historical Map: Metropolitan Transit Train System, Melbourne, 1981

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The Melbourne suburban train network just after the City Loop opened in 1981. This is probably my favourite map of this particular network: it’s clean and graphically simple — black dots are all that are used to indicate parking, not a graphical vehicle icon or even a “P” in a circle. The colours are nice and bright and group the lines into operational groups quite neatly… an approach I prefer far more than the zone-based […]

Historical Map: Bay Area Regional Transit Connections, 1981

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Submitted by Calley, who says: This was found via the /r/BayArea subreddit. It appears to be an authentic transit map from September 1981 still hanging in the 12th Street Oakland City Center BART station! It’s published by an entity I’ve never heard of called the “Regional Transit Association.” On your blog I’ve previously seen a very clumsy and messy map that attempted to show the myriad transit systems of the Bay, including rail and connecting […]

Project: Amtrak Timeline Map, 1971-2017

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Historical Maps, Visualizations

Here's a fun little project: an interactive timeline of Amtrak's passenger rail routes from its inauguration in 1971 through to the current day. Using the extensive Amtrak timetable archives over at the Museum of Railway Timetables (well worth a visit!), I've created maps in five year increments -- 1971, 1976, 1981, etc. -- that show the changing face of passenger rail in the United States over the last 40-plus years. Click through to inspect the map!

Submission – Historical Map: Proposed Baghdad Metro Map, c. 1981-1984

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Submitted by peopleneedaplacetogo, who says: The Wikipedia article for “Baghdad Metro” includes this unsourced image of a proposed network map. The way the colours are used in different directions is quite unusual but I guess makes sense if each colour corresponds to a destination (e.g. if destination signs on the front of trains are coloured). Transit Maps says: Hooray for reverse image search, which eventually revealed that this absolutely beautiful diagram was drawn by Richard […]

Historical Map: Tyne and Wear Metro, 1981

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A beautiful early map for this system, clearly showing how much of it was planned from the start. Apart from a few name changes (the proposed “Old Fold” station became Gateshead Stadium, for example), this is recognisably the same map that existed as far into the future as the year 2000, when the proposed extension to Sunderland made its appearance. The outlined route lines to show proposed/future extensions work wonderfully well, making an excellent contrast […]

Historical Map: Washington, DC Metro Map, 1981

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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 […]

Historical Map: Metro de Madrid, 1981

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Having had a look at Madrid’s current map (2.5 stars), I thought we’d delve into the past and see what came before it. The first thing to notice is how much smaller the system was in 1981: only 10 Metro lines instead of 12 — and many of those are much shorter than now, and no light rail lines. Have we been there? No. What we like: A paragon of clean, functional transit map design. […]