A couple of great photos showing the unique Underground Map-themed livery on GB Railfreight engine 66721. The left side of the engine shows a portion of the original 1933 H.C. Beck design, while the right side shows the corresponding part of the 2013 Tube map. I believe that this engine is used to perform maintenance work on sections of the Underground, so the theme is certainly appropriate, as is the engine’s name plaque, seen in […]
Sent in by long-time Transit Maps reader and contributor, @dars_dm, here’s a great old photo of an interactive map kiosk in the Moscow Metro. Push a button, and your route lights up! Apparently, these displays were common at many Metro stations through the early 1970s. Highly reminiscent of the Paris Metro’s plan indicateur lumineux d’itinéraires (or PILI), an example of which I featured previously. Source: PastVu website via @dars_dm
Heh. Love the expression on his face. Source: TGKW/Flickr
Simply enormous map at the Estació de Barcelona-Sants, showing both the Metro and commuter rail networks. It’s made up of twenty-eight square screens, each of which looks pretty big in their own right! Source: fredajude/Flickr – link no longer active
A system as simple as Glasgow’s (one loop of track with a mere 15 stations) lends itself well to a minimalist design approach. Indeed, the current official map is pretty darn simple itself. However, this neat little two-colour poster from Glasgow-based creative agency, Verboten, definitely takes a very different approach to that minimalism. It eschews any attempt at geography, dispensing with the River Clyde completely (although the gaps between the groups of stations give away its […]
Lovely informational clarity in this detail from a beautiful 1931 map of Berlins transit – tram, bus and U-Bahn. Of particular note is how all labelling that is not directly related to the transit routes is rendered in a visually pleasing and subordinate light grey. Source: IsarSteve – link no longer active
Okay, here’s just one more Tube-map themed poster (for now). This one’s a little more contemporary than the others I’ve featured recently, dating from early 1979. The cheerful little Tube train – which looks like a model that’s been photographed, rather than an illustration – is actually a pretty reasonable stand-in for the geographical layout of the new line, which then ran from Stanmore to a new Charing Cross station (later extensions mean that the […]
Here’s another beautiful old London Underground poster that features the Tube map, apparently produced to help servicemen unfamiliar with London get around. The poster, which basically acts as a Tube Map for Dummies guide, was placed next to the map in stations, with the abstract guard pointing towards it. The “tear-away” section at the bottom right shows a slightly modified version (angles aren’t at 45 degrees, the Aldwych spur is missing) of the central part […]
You just can’t beat 1930s London Underground posters – a superb mix of art, design and branding. This one’s a real beauty! Of interest is that it playfully echoes the look of Beck’s Tube Diagram, then only two years old. Design by O’Keeffe. Source: Mikey Ashworth/Flickr
Painted by prolific transport poster artist Montague B. Black, this lovely poster shows the services of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) in England’s north east in 1934. The view stretches from Middlesborough all the up the Northumberland coast to the Scottish Borders and beyond. Each city is painted in imprecise but evocative detail, as is Hadrian’s Wall, shown stretching from Carlisle to Newcastle across the centre of the map. The late afternoon colour […]
