All posts tagged: United Kingdom

Historical Map: London Metropolitan Railway and Connections, c. 1930

June 15, 2012
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A fantastic old in-car map from London’s old Metropolitan Railway: the world’s first underground railway and the precursor to the modern London Underground. Today, former Metropolitan Railway tracks and stations are used by the London Underground’s Metropolitan, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly and Jubilee lines. I’m guessing this map is from around 1930 or so, as the Railway’s lines are substantially complete apart from the Stanmore extension out of Wembley Park, which opened in […]

Photo: British Rail Eastern In-Car Map

May 31, 2012
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A lovely example of British Rail’s house style of the 1960s and 70s, now residing at the East Anglian Railway Museum. This map is from between 1965 (the introduction of the “double-arrow” British Rail identity), and 1978 (when the “Eastern” component of the logo changed from sitting in an outlined box to a solid box like the British Rail text). Can anyone date it more definitively? Source: Deptford Draylons/Flickr

Historical Map: British Rail Greater London Network, 1965

May 17, 2012
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Here’s a fantastic map out of England in the mid-60s, showing British Rail service in the Greater London area. It’s almost staggering to think that a map this well drawn was created without the use of computers. I definitely recommend clicking through to the large image on Flickr to savour all the beautiful, crisp linework: this map is technically excellent. Have we been there? Yes, and I’ve used many of the great London terminus stations, […]

Official Map: Key Bus Routes in Central London, 2012

February 11, 2012
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This charming diagram produced by Transport for London is obviously targeted at tourists, but still manages to pack a lot of information in – bus routes, tourist attractions, connections to the Tube, Overground, DLR, National Rail and river ferries. That it still manages to look attractive and be easy to follow makes it all the better. Have we been there? Yes, and I even got off the Tube to catch a bus here and there. […]

Official Map: Glasgow Subway (Before and After)

February 10, 2012
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It’s always fun to do a comparison between old and new maps, and we have a great opportunity with this very recent rebranding of the Glasgow Subway (the third-oldest subway system in the world at 115 years of age, after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro). A deceptively simple system, the Subway consists of a single loop with 15 stations — trains run clockwise on the Outer Circle, and anti-clockwise on the Inner Circle. […]

Historical Map: George Dow Diagram of LNER Great Northern Suburban Services, 1929

December 13, 2011
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Almost everyone credits Harry Beck with “inventing” the diagrammatic transit map in 1933 with his iconic London Underground map. But the diagram form had already been in use for a number of years before that, as shown in this delightful 1929 diagram for LNER suburban services out of London’s Kings Cross station to points north. It was designed by George Dow, who created many such diagrams for the LNER. His son, Andrew Dow, wrote a […]

Official Map: Tyne & Wear Metro, England, 2011

November 17, 2011
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Opened in 1980, the Tyne and Wear Metro is the first of Britain’s modern light rail systems. It also benefits from a very strong corporate identity with the slab serif Calvert typeface (named after its creator and one of the original identity designers in 1977, the famous Margaret Calvert) as a core component. The typeface is used extensively throughout the system, even as wall-sized station names as seen in the photo of Monument Station. Taken […]