The lovely 1970 Dutch train map featured in my previous post was brought to my attention by the author of this map – a pitch-perfect recreation of the current IntercIty network in the old map’s style. Apart from a bit of welcome clean-up to the islands at bottom left (a big improvement in the clarity of the cartography here), everything else is faithfully rendered – including the odd little notch taken out of the south bank of the Afsluitdijk, which I can’t really see a reason for on either map.

Veen notes that Nederlandse Spoorwegen still uses the “A” through “H” designations from the 1970s for Intercity lines today, so there’s quite a bit of commonality between the two maps. There’s some extra granularity in the modern network, as most of the letters are broken up into “a” and “b” sub-designations as well. Veen shows this by giving related lines similar colours, which works quite effectively. There’s also a few “non-letter” IC routes that have been worked in quite nicely as well. I don’t think Veen’s thicker station ticks are quite as elegant as the hairline ones used in the 1970s map, but they do the job.

Overall, a thoughtful adaptation of an old map’s style to show the current system. A fun design exercise, and very deftly executed.

Source: AS Veen/Flickr