All posts tagged: Sydney

Historical Map: Sydney Railway Layout, 1953

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Historical Maps

Unearthed on Twitter (It’ll always be Twitter to me, no matter what Elon says) by @crossing_lights, this is quite an extraordinary find. Long-time readers may have seen the 1939 version of this diagram (and the digital recreation that I made). Here’s the thing: the general consensus has always been that this was a one-off attempt at something in the style of H.C. Beck’s newfangled London Underground diagram. I seem to recall that one theory even […]

Official Map: Sydney Trains Bankstown Line Closure Bus Services Map… and a Better Unofficial Alternative

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Official Maps, Unofficial Maps

Sydney’s Bankstown Line is closing for two weeks at the end of June as part of its conversion from standard heavy rail to a new and fancy high-frequency Metro line. Sydney Trains has produced the following map to help people navigate the many train replacement bus services needed to get riders around, and it’s… not great. While I understand that producing this type of map often involves a rapid turnaround with very little budget, this […]

Submission – Unofficial Maps: Sydney and Melbourne “Body Swap” Maps by Thomas Soo

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Mash-Up Maps, Unofficial Maps

Submitted by Thomas, who says: I felt like Melbourne was so far away because of the Covid-Curtain and desperately wanted to do anything but study for uni this weekend so I made this! It’s amazing how different the approaches to passenger commute information, up-front legibility and overall design cues differ between the rival cities. Transit Maps says: What a fun little project! What I particularly like is just how far Thomas has taken the “body […]

Unofficial Map: Future Sydney Rail Network by u/Toweringhorizons

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Future Maps, Unofficial Maps

I just stumbled across this unofficial vision of Sydney’s rail transit around the year 2030 or so (mainly because the discussion about it on Reddit was linking to old Sydney maps on my blog), and I have to say that I really quite like it. The 30/60 angles actually suit the network really well, and set up some nice axes and patterns throughout the diagram. I especially like the way the Cumberland Line heads straight […]

Submission – Official Map: Sydney CBD Bus Spider Map, 2020

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Official Maps

Submitted by Felix Taaff, who says: Attached is a map of available bus routes from a single stop near Sydney’s Central Station. Apologies for the image quality [Don’t worry – I straightened the image in Photoshop – Cam]. I was intrigued by the map with my first impression being that it would be very useful to tourists and visitors near Central station, with a network of routes shown but focussing on the CBD area. But […]

Submission – Official Map: Sydney Rail Network Map, 2019

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Official Maps, Unofficial Maps

Submitted by a good number of people, who have all spotted this new map in the latest batch of Sydney Trains timetables and want to know what I might think. I’ve talked about a draft version of this map quite a bit on Twitter already, but I may as well compile my thoughts “officially” on the blog as well. Transit Maps says: The most obvious change to this revision of the map is the addition […]

Submission – Official Map: Buses around the Eastern Suburbs, Sydney, Australia

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Submitted by Felix, who says: Transport for NSW released a new bus route map for the Eastern Suburbs, which I noticed a hard copy of and they provided a PDF upon request. There are many bus routes in the area and, because of the hilly terrain, many have quirks in their routes. I’ve spoken to many a tourist or visitor at Bondi Junction interchange, or one of the beaches, confused about which bus to take. […]

Historical Map: Sydney Tramways, 1921

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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

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Historical Maps

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

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Historical Maps

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 […]