All posts tagged: Australia

Historical Maps: Melbourne Tram Destination Posters by Vernon Jones, c. 1930s

June 30, 2018
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps, Prints Available
Tags:

A handsome pair of posters promoting easy travel by tram to destinations around Melbourne, designed by artist Vernon Jones (1908–2002), perhaps better known for his illustration work documenting WWII. The dating on these is a little uncertain, with some sources placing the first edition as early as 1925. They were used for a number of years: a later edition of the “Zoo” poster revised the time from Collins Street to a perhaps more realistic 14 minutes. […]

Historical Map: Sydney Tramways, 1921

February 23, 2018
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

This is one of those maps where I’m not entirely sure if it’s the brainchild of a genius or the work of a madman. It’s an insanely detailed map-slash-diagram of tram routes in Sydney from 1921 by an unknown author that also attempts to indicate almost every major cross-street along the way. Intersections that are also designated as tram stops get a marker and increasingly larger labels to indicate their relative importance. Five different line […]

Historical Map: Suburban Bus Routes of Sydney, 1961

February 13, 2018
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

The map on the reverse side of the previously featured diagram of downtown Sydney bus routes, showing an overview of routes throughout the city. The map even comments on its own shortcomings to the bottom left , with a disclaimer that almost apologetically states that “This map is intended only as a guide to the bus services.” Using the same colour-coding and ambiguous naming conventions as that diagram, the map is mainly notable for highlighting the […]

Historical Map: Location of City Bus Terminals, Sydney, 1961

February 4, 2018
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

A map showing the main Sydney bus terminals and the routes which ran through them from December 1961. The route designations are an uncomfortable mix of streets the buses run along downtown (Pitt and Castlereagh Street Services) and eventual destinations (Northern Suburbs Services via the Harbour Bridge), which doesn’t really help to make the system user-friendly. The extensive legend below the map helps somewhat, but it’s all somewhat arcane. In practice, you remembered where the […]

Historical Map: New South Wales By Train Information Wheel, 1938

January 23, 2018
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

I’m loving this little promotional piece produced by the New South Wales Railway Department in 1938. The user would rotate the outer ring so that a city’s name would line up with the red arrow, thus revealing various facts about that place, including which railway line it was located on and how far from Sydney it was by rail. Here, Canberra’s statistics are shown. A lovely little piece of railway ephemera. Source: National Library of […]

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

January 15, 2018
comments 2
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

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 Advertisement: Opening of the Eastern Suburbs Railway, Sydney, June 1979

October 27, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

A full-page ad in the Daily Telegraph newspaper promoting the opening of the Eastern Suburbs line. Along with the copy promoting all the benefits – modern stations, high speed escalators and automatic turnstiles amongst them – there’s a neat little diagram that shows how the line is integrated into the wider transit network. Along with the nicely stylised City Circle, there’s also lines radiating out from the new stations to show bus connections. Of interest […]

Submission – Draft Official Map: Sydney Trains, August 2017

August 20, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Sent my way by quite a few keen-eyed Aussie correspondents, including Thomas Mudgway, who offers this commentary: Another update from Sydney, this time fairly major. Transport for NSW is making some big changes to Sydney Trains’ operating patterns, with a new order of trains allowing them to boost the Western Line by something like 300 extra services per week. The T2 line cluster has been split so that we now have a T8, which runs […]

Historical Map: Sydney Rail Transport System Strip Map, c. mid-1970s

January 6, 2017
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

Here’s a great old system map of Sydney’s suburban rail system from around the middle of the 1970s. It has to be from before 1978, as that’s the year that the Eastern Suburbs line opened, and it’s not shown here. I distinctly remember seeing a few of these in old “Red Rattler” carriages in the mid-to-late 1980s, so they lived on well past their “use by” date. As seen here, the maps lived above the windows […]