Greetings from beautiful, sunny Sydney, where I’m currently visiting family — my first time back home for six years. Of course, I can’t help but look around and see transit maps wherever I go, and here’s the one that shows the Harbour City’s extensive and under-rated ferry network. Most notably, the map shows which wharf each ferry leaves from at Circular Quay, the main hub of the system. The importance of knowing this cannot be […]
Here’s a beautifully drawn old map created for the Peninsula Bus Lines in Victoria, Australia by Robert J. Amor. There’s no date, but the general aesthetics and the presence of “Military Camps” near Mount Martha leads me to believe the map is from around 1940-1947, after which Balcombe Camp became the Army Apprentice School. Elements to really look out for: the beautiful ornate compass rose, the olde-time scrolls enclosing town names, and the cameo pictures […]
Simple but effective use of an otherwise long and empty space on the station shelter. Could do with a bit of a clean, though. Source: Sweet One/Flickr
The extent of the tramway system in Perth, Australia in the 30s and 40s before it was all ripped up in 1958. Ironically, the State Government wants to build a new tram network over 50 years later. Transit Maps says: Sweet old school tram map, with routes simply and clearly overprinted in bold red on top of a street map. Perth certainly isn’t alone in rebuilding what once existed: this type of urban renewal through […]
Here’s a map that has been requested quite a few times, but I’ve held off on until now. Having lived in Sydney most of my life, I think it’s difficult to be dispassionate about something I’m so familiar with… but here goes! Have we been there? You know it! What we like: Clear and easy to understand. Different types of services are denoted well, but in a nicely understated way: grey lines with coloured ticks […]
From the back of a Gregory’s Street Directory by the look of things, and very much in their house style. I’m not sure this map is actually helping things that much: Sydney’s labyrinthine network of streets is partially to blame, but the flow of arrows and lines could also be much clearer. The strange decision to make the background black for the second half of the suburb list (to the right of the map) has […]
Here’s another interesting planning map from Sydney, Australia, showing a vision for the future that never quite got there. If you look to the far centre right of the map, you can see the planned Eastern Suburbs line… including a never-built extension from the (now current) end of the line at Bondi Junction to Kingsford. There’s also an extra station at Woollahra in the section that did finally get built. It’s these details that allow […]
Here’s an interesting map from my hometown of Sydney, Australia from around 1969. Unusually, it doesn’t display different services as separate coloured route lines: everything is shown as one uniform orange line. It also displays the distance from Sydney Central station (in miles), and the elevation (in feet) of each station. Non-electrified lines are shown as dashed lines. These odd features lead me to believe that this is a map for internal NSW Railways use, […]
Can you call it a network map when it consists of one line and a soon-to-be defunct (and despised) monorail? A north pointer would really help here as well, as west is at the bottom of the map. Source: Michael “Comeng301M” Coley/Flickr
Just how influential was the original Harry Beck London Underground diagram of 1933? Certainly enough for Sydney, Australia to issue this nearly identical vision of its own suburban rail system in 1939, right down to its own version of the London Underground roundel. I’ve never been able to find out whether this map was authorised or licensed from the London Underground, or whether Sydney just thought, “that looks like a good idea, let’s do that!” […]
