Submitted by James, who says:
Hello there! The last time you reviewed a map of mine was in 2015 [See review here – Cam]. Since then I’ve moved houses, had several new jobs, and been through a pandemic. I’ve recently been reworking a map of the Welsh rail network, based on a 2:1 triangular grid, using Affinity Designer which has continued to improve.
You will see there are some clear design factors in the diagram. A large improvement from my last design is the ability to adopt a balance between map and diagram. There’s a North-South line between Manchester/Liverpool and Newport, and I finally managed to get the Valley Lines evenly spaced and visually balanced, including space for planned stations. I’ve included the Oswestry and Amlwch proposals.
I’m pleased that the South Wales Mainline gives a strong, smooth base to the diagram, and likewise the North Wales Coast line gives a clear Northern boundary hugging the coast. The Cambrian and Heart of Wales lines provide a nice balance in the centre – almost like the ‘scales’ in 90’s versions of the Lyon metro.
I’ve finally managed to incorporate large parts of the TrawsCymru bus network where it augments (rather than competes with) the railway. This means the rural heart of Wales doesn’t look as empty as it otherwise would, and there’s also some Western ‘closure’ to the map. Despite that, it’s clear that there’s less public transport in the West and North, which reflects reality. Four connecting steam railways are also included.
The map is bilingual, except for where there’s a single spelling of a location or – and this is my preference – the Welsh is so similar to the English that I’ve simply opted for the Welsh alone. (Merthyr Tydful being an example.)
Like every such diagram, there are trade-offs. This isn’t perfect and there’s a number of things I can’t quite fix:
- The ruling size of the station labels the impossibly long Eneu’r-glyn a Pharc Churchill Energyln & Churchill Park. That gave a 6pt type size which is … on the small end. I could not come up with a way to make this bigger without making the Rhymni line quite a mess, or implausibly broadening the whole of the Valley Lines.
- Grangetown and the future Loundon Square are close to their station dots, but not close enough for my liking.
- Heath High Level and Low Level is a constant problem when it comes to managing two stations with long names in two languages whose platforms are only 70 metres apart. I’ve given it a go as best I can
- Bilingual station names can vary immensely in size, and I’ve opted to evenly space the text up a route line and move the station dots to match, rather than keep the dots an equal distance but mash the text up. This is most obvious on the Merthyr, Rhymni and Ebbw Vale lines.
- Finally the ‘kink’ of the Marches line approaching Newport is a pity, but avoids confusion with the SWML and reflects a number of twists the passenger goes through to get into the station.
Other than this I’m pleased with the graphic balance, the legibility, and the room for future plans to be incorporated without changing the diagram. But I’d be very interested in your own thoughts!
Transit Maps says:
When I reviewed James’ previous diagram back in 2015, I noted that it was unfortunate that it didn’t really look anything like Wales, being squished into a landscape A3 format. This new version definitely solves that problem by employing a 2:1 grid (which gives angles of 26.57° instead of the commonly-employed “isometric angle” of 30°), allowing for an excellent approximation of Wales’ shape. Note how James only uses vertical lines and 26.57° lines (no horizontal or steeper 63.43° lines), which makes the diagram very compositionally strong.
Within that shape, all the lines are arranged in a very visually pleasing way – I particularly like the way all of the Metro lines fan out evenly from Cardiff. Nothing feels too cramped, which is quite an achievement given the use of bilingual labels. I think that spacing station labels evenly instead of their dots was definitely the right choice in this instance, so well done to James for using this solution.
Inclusion of connecting bus services is most welcome and fleshes out the network nicely, and showing the heritage steam railways as well is just the icing on the cake. I think the only thing I really miss is an indication of ferry connections at Holyhead, Fishguard and Milford Haven, just to complete the transportation picture.
The legend does seem to be missing an indication that coloured station labels indicated planned Metro stations, but that’s easily fixed.
Our final word: A massive improvement from James’ previous effort (which wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination) – this is confident, bright and really well executed. Great work, and definitely better than the stodgy and old-fashioned official Transport for Wales effort (PDF link).