All posts tagged: interurban

Historical Map: Pacific Electric Railway System in Southern California, c. 1926 by Jake Berman

September 5, 2018
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I’m really enjoying this modern take on a map of the Pacific Electric’s sprawling electric streetcar network by Jake Berman. Obviously based on the period map shown (or an extremely similar one!), it retains a lot of the visual energy of the original – mainly because of the multiple angles used for both the route lines and labels. Normally, this might be something I’d find fault with, but I think it’s totally appropriate here when […]

Historical Map: Map Showing the Great Coal Fields, Natural Gas Fields, Steam and Electric Railroads: and All Important Towns, Villages, and Streams Tributary to Columbus Within a Radius of 70 Miles

May 8, 2018
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Phew – that’s quite the title, but what an amazing map! Using a sort of azimuthal projection, it places Columbus seemingly at the centre of the world, with a “horizon” of 70 miles in all directions. Towns, natural resources and the many and varied railroads of the time all radiate out from this mighty epicentre in great detail, receding into the distance as the scale diminishes on the outer edges. Clever use of a limited colour […]

Historical Map: Map of Kyoto and Vicinity, 1920

January 27, 2018
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Here’s a lovely old map of Kyoto, issued by the Miyako Hotel in 1920 for the benefit of its guests. The hotel is still there almost 100 years later, now owned by the Westin Group. The interurban streetcar to Otsu that once ran down the middle of the street in front of the hotel was abandoned in 1997, replaced by the underground Tōzai Line of the Kyoto Municipal Subway. The electric streetcars are displayed prominently on […]

Historical Map: Map Showing Indianapolis as a Steam Railroad and Interurban Center, 1907

October 17, 2017
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Here’s an absolutely wonderful diagram of rail in Indianapolis in 1907 that pares everything down to the absolute minimum required to tell the story. 43 completely evenly-spaced railroad lines (representing 18 steam lines and 25 interurbans, according to the source) enter the city, which is encircled by the aptly named Belt Railroad. The names of those 43 outer destinations spiral dramatically around the edge of the map, though the flow is perhaps broken a bit […]

Historical Map: Rail Car and Bus Routes of Central Vancouver, April 1953

April 27, 2016
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A hand-coloured and lettered (in what looks like colour pencil!) map showing the various streetcar, interurban trains and bus routes in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia in 1953 – just five years before the interurban trains ceased operations. The north pointer on this map is one of the loveliest I have seen. See also: this charming illustrated transit map of Vancouver from 1930. Source: City of Vancouver Archives/Flickr

Historical Map: Southern Pacific “Red Electric” Tracks in Downtown Portland, c. 1920

February 14, 2014
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Scanned from the book “The Red Electrics: Southern Pacific’s Oregon Interurbans” by Tom Dill and Walter Grande. This handsome map shows the routing of the Southern Pacific’s electric interurban trains through downtown Portland from their northern terminus at Union Station. These trains, popularly known as the “Red Electrics” after their distinctive carriages, ran from Portland all the way down the Willamette Valley as far as Corvallis, 85 miles distant. Service started in 1914, extended to […]