All posts tagged: USA

Historical Map: New Orleans Streetcar Trackage Map, 1945

December 18, 2013
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A neat little map from the July, 1945 edition of the Electric Railroader’s Association’s Headlights magazine – both the association and the publication are still going strong today. The map shows all the tracks in the Big Easy at the time, including those that were in usable condition but not currently utilised (indicated by a hash across the track). Routes are indicated by letters that were keyed to the text of the original article – […]

Unofficial Map: Washington DC Metro Map by Peter Dovak

December 13, 2013
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An interesting approach to an alternative DC Metro map by Peter Dovak, who previously submitted this fantasy light rail map of Louisville, Kentucky.  There’s quite a bit to like here: I love the circular abstraction of the beltway highway around DC, which is then centred perfactly around the District diamond. Peter’s even made sure that the “square” formed by the three main interchange stations – Metro Center, Gallery Place and L’Enfant Plaza – sits at […]

Official Map: New York/New Jersey Regional Transit Diagram – Full Review

December 10, 2013
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After our first glimpse yesterday, now it’s time for a more in-depth look at this map. Thanks to everyone who sent me a link to the PDF (and there were more than a few of you)! First things first: an MTA press release confirms that the map was designed by Yoshiki Waterhouse of Vignelli Associates. It’s definitely nice to see that the original creators of the diagram continue to shape its future, rather than being […]

Official Map: New York/New Jersey Regional Transit Diagram for 2014

December 9, 2013
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Hot off the presses via New Jersey Transit’s Twitter account, here’s a first look at a new regional transit map that (finally!) combines New Jersey Transit rail, PATH rail and the New York Subway onto one map to “facilitate ease of travel between all three systems”. It appears to be heavily based off the Massimo Vignelli “Weekender” diagram, although I don’t know if Vignelli himself (or his studio) was actually involved in the design of […]

Submission – Unofficial/Future Map: Long Island Rail Road by Anthony Denaro

December 9, 2013
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Submitted by Anthony, who says: Here’s my map of Off-Peak (weekdays, and nights) and Weekends Long Island Rail Road Service.   This map shows service diagrammatically, de-emphasizing geography for clarity of branch services and transfers, introduces a grouping color coding system for branches, and improves legibility of the system. The LIRR current map lacks both routing and geographic info – there’s no sense of connecting roads and services and no sense of which branch’s trains stop at which station – failing at […]

Historical Map: The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe “Disneyland” Map, 1956

November 22, 2013
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A simply gorgeous mid-1950s map of the AT&SF’s passenger routes, taken from a promotional brochure produced in conjunction with Disneyland, which is shown prominently to the right of the map. The brochure was ostensibly an introduction to the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad at Disneyland, then only a year old. Understandably, the AT&SF – who had basically bankrolled construction of the 5/8th scale railroad – were keen to get some return in their investment. As […]

Historical Photo: Detroit Department of Street Railways (DSR) Coach and Car Stop Locator, c. 1955

November 16, 2013
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An interesting twist on the old push-button interactive transit map. Instead of pressing a button to map out your route, here you press a button to find out where in Detroit’s downtown area to board your bus or streetcar. Although difficult to make out, the text along the bottom of the map seems to read: “To locate your loading zone, press button on your line.” I’m not entirely sure how successful this innovation was, as […]

Unofficial Maps: Other Salt Lake City Rail Transit Maps

November 11, 2013
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A selection of alternate maps for Salt Lake City that I’ve received as submissions or that I’ve found on the Internet. The first two maps – by thatlattesipper and scsj, respectively – were sent to me in the aftermath of Friday’s review of the UTA’s latest absymal effort, and must therefore have only had a few hours of work put into them. Scsj’s map was actually produced by an online transit map generator in less […]

Official Map: Salt Lake City Rail Transit for Opening of New “S Line”

November 8, 2013
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Submitted by the eagle-eyed Garrett Smith, who says: I must say I am not overly impressed with UTA’s revision of their rail map—which will begin to be posted in trains once UTA’s first streetcar, the S Line, opens. Yes, it certainly is better than before. Removing addresses from the map did wonders for improving legibility. But that’s about it. Call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t the lines below the station names roughly correspond to the […]

Historical Map: The Burlington Route (Chicago to San Francisco), 1879

November 6, 2013
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Here’s a beautiful map from the glory days of American railroading, showing the route from Chicago to San Francisco via Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. Amtrak’s modern-day California Zephyr still calls at many of the same locations between Chicago and Omaha to the east and from Elko to Oakland in the west, but takes a different route through the middle, using Colorado instead of Wyoming. Although presented as one continuous route, the […]