All posts tagged: Europe

Historical Map: British Rail Network SouthEast, 1988

May 9, 2013
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Network SouthEast was an operating division of British Rail that was formed in 1982 (although it was known as London & South Eastern until 1986). It was responsible for inter-city and commuter rail for the densely-populated south east of England, including London. Of course, beginning in 1994, Network SouthEast was privatised along with the rest of British Rail, leading to the convoluted network of private rail companies we see today. But what we have here […]

Historical Map: Old M1 Signage, Bucharest Metro, Romania, c. 1989

April 24, 2013
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The Gara de Nord to Dristor 2 section of the M1 line opened in 1989, and this signage certainly looks like it’s from that era. The design is pretty rough and ready, looking almost like the sign makers made it up as they went along, but it does have a certain brutalist charm about it.  Of particular interest are the two patches at each end of the map that keep this old map somewhat up […]

Historical Map: Alilaguna Gold Line, Venice, 2006

April 19, 2013
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We’ve featured Venice’s public transportation ferry map previously (February 2012, 2.5 stars), but here’s an interesting photo of a map by Alilaguna, a privately-run ferry and water taxi service. This map, dating back to 2006, shows only the Alilaguna Linea Oro (Gold Line), running from the airport to St. Mark’s Square. Interestingly, this express route no longer exists, leaving passengers to lake the slower, local Linea Blu to the heart of Venice instead. The map […]

Historical Map: Circular London Underground Map Sketch, Harry Beck, c. 1964

April 14, 2013
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For those who thought that the two circular London Underground diagrams I featured earlier this year — by Jonny Fisher and Maxwell Roberts — were a completely modern twist on an old classic, here’s a reminder of just how forward-thinking Harry Beck really was. This is a sketch, dated to 1964 at the earliest (due to his adoption of Paul Garbutt’s dot-in-a-circle device for main line interchange stations), that presents the Circle Line as a […]

Historical Map: Isometric S-Bahn Map, Stuttgart, 2007

April 4, 2013
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Really? After all this time running this blog, only now do I find out that the incredible isometric Stuttgart U- and S-Bahn map (October 2011, 5 stars) has an S-Bahn-only sibling? If anything, this is actually even better than that map: fewer route lines leads to more graphical simplicity. Like that map, however, it’s since been replaced with something disappointingly normal. Source: shelbycearley/Flickr

Unofficial Map: Live Map of London Underground Trains

April 1, 2013
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Submitted by Travertine Libertine. Transit Maps says: Created by Matthew Somerville. Totally hypnotic after a while as all those little yellow train dots start racing around (it kind of reminds me of a mash-up between the Scotland Yard board game and the original Railroad Tycoon). Childhood reminiscing done, it really is amazing what can be done with raw data pulled via an API these days. Stuff like this is the future of transit information.

Photo – Official Map: Opolskie Voivodeship Railway Network, Poland

March 27, 2013
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The whole map is a bit of a mess, with all sorts of random angles everywhere (both route lines and station labels), but what really takes this map into the land of the bizarre are the big photos of trains superimposed over it. It’s like someone said, “Hey, there’s a bit of white space left over – what can we fill it up with? I know! How about some shots of our trains, and we’ll rotate […]

All Aboard the Orient Express!

March 25, 2013
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Here’s an absolutely charming little map found on the inside of a French model train set box lid. I don’t have a definitive date for this, but it does have a lovely retro feel to it. The map itself isn’t much help, as it’s pretty much a work of fiction: a weird combination of different parts of the Orient Express’s historical routes (see this diagram on Wikipedia) and a branch to Warsaw via Prague that […]