All posts tagged: Australia

Historical Map: Sydney Railway Layout, 1953

September 29, 2023
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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 […]

Historical Map: Trams of Brisbane, Queensland, 1957

May 9, 2023
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A simple but nicely drawn map of tram services in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in 1957. The lack of any sort of key for the routes means that users need to have some familiarity with the city to decipher where trams might go. The pamphlet that the map is part of includes information about the route names and first and last cars for the day along with some sight-seeing tours that can be made by tram, […]

Official Map: Sydney Trains Bankstown Line Closure Bus Services Map… and a Better Unofficial Alternative

June 7, 2021
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Sydney’s Bankstown Line is closing for two weeks at the end of June as part of its conversion from standard heavy rail to a new and fancy high-frequency Metro line. Sydney Trains has produced the following map to help people navigate the many train replacement bus services needed to get riders around, and it’s… not great. While I understand that producing this type of map often involves a rapid turnaround with very little budget, this […]

Official Map: Melbourne Tram Network, 2021

May 26, 2021
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Here’s a review that’s definitely very overdue: the official Melbourne tram network diagram. Overall, it’s a very pleasantly stylised depiction of the network using 30-degree angles, though it probably takes diagrammatic expansion of the downtown area to extremes. The distance from Harbour Esplanade to Spring Street is just 2.5km (or 1.5 miles), but it takes up a huge portion of the map, shrinking Melbourne’s expansive suburbs substantially. I will say that the extra room for […]

Submission – Unofficial Maps: Sydney and Melbourne “Body Swap” Maps by Thomas Soo

September 21, 2020
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Submitted by Thomas, who says: I felt like Melbourne was so far away because of the Covid-Curtain and desperately wanted to do anything but study for uni this weekend so I made this! It’s amazing how different the approaches to passenger commute information, up-front legibility and overall design cues differ between the rival cities. Transit Maps says: What a fun little project! What I particularly like is just how far Thomas has taken the “body […]

Submission – Melbourne Suburban Rail in the Style of Vignelli by Philip Mallis

August 21, 2020
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Originally submitted by Philip himself, with further submissions reminding me of it recently. Of the map, Philip says: This is my interpretation of what Melbourne’s rail network could look like in the style of the 1972 Vignelli New York Subway map. I have depicted the current Melbourne metropolitan passenger rail network as it stands in 2020, plus one tram route. Given this is a map of Melbourne with the largest tram network in the world, […]

Official Map: Transwa Transportation Network, Western Australia, 2020

August 17, 2020
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Submitted by Davey, who says: Not a heavy Metro-centric map like your usual fare, these are mostly country road coaches spanning the wide south-west of Western Australia (spanning about 1,300kms from Kalbarri to Esperance). I find it interesting to look at though, especially the reliance on different dot-dash combinations for each coach. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts. Transit Maps says: First things first – let’s get the pronunciation of this awkwardly styled name […]

Submission – Official Map: Sydney CBD Bus Spider Map, 2020

July 21, 2020
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Submitted by Felix Taaff, who says: Attached is a map of available bus routes from a single stop near Sydney’s Central Station. Apologies for the image quality [Don’t worry – I straightened the image in Photoshop – Cam]. I was intrigued by the map with my first impression being that it would be very useful to tourists and visitors near Central station, with a network of routes shown but focussing on the CBD area. But […]

Historical Map: Suburban Rail Map of Adelaide, South Australia, 1985

June 10, 2020
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A solid mid-1980s map of Adelaide’s surprisingly extensive suburban rail network – though there’s less branch lines than seen on this 1978 map, and many of the ones shown here would disappear in the next few years, no longer seen as profitable. The fact that all rail services are numbered allows short-turn and branch services to be easily discerned – on the green line, the 82 goes from Adelaide Station to Belair, while the 83 […]

Historical Map: Metropolitan Transit Train System, Melbourne, 1981

March 3, 2020
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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 […]