The Flickr Undergroundmap Image Generatr

Map of City of London and Westminster by MacDonald Gill, brother of Eric Gill.

Map of City of London and Westminster.
1 London thou art of townes a per se 2 sovereign of cities, semeliest in sight 3 of high renoun, riches and royaltie 4 of lords barons and many a goodly knight 5 of most delectable lusty ladies bright 6 of famous prelatis in habits clerical 7 of merchauntis full of substaunce and of might 8 London thou art the flour of cities all.

See inside ➡️ The London Underground - Diagram of lines and Zonal map - No1 1984

Bus, Tube and street maps and tourist information from 1983.

A well designed and simple leaflet issued by London Transport in Autumn 1972 describing the services and stations on London Underground's relatively new Victoria line from Walthamstow to Brixton; the first phase had opened in 1968/69 with the Brixton section being completed in 1971. It gives details of fares (in the, again, relatively new decimal currency) as well as service intervals that show what a step change there has been in terms of delivery and train intervals in recent years.

The leaflet was designed in LT's own Publicity Office but is, unusually credited to a specific designer, Tim Demuth. Although the titling, line diagram and map (the Paul Garbutt version here) is set in Johnston, the body text isn't. It also shows the automatic ticket gates that were pioneered on the Victoria line and the 'experiment' already in place to ease use and maintenance of the gates.

A well designed and simple leaflet issued by London Transport in Autumn 1972 describing the services and stations on London Underground's relatively new Victoria line from Walthamstow to Brixton; the first phase had opened in 1968/69 with the Brixton section being completed in 1971. It gives details of fares (in the, again, relatively new decimal currency) as well as service intervals that show what a step change there has been in terms of delivery and train intervals in recent years.

The leaflet was designed in LT's own Publicity Office but is, unusually credited to a specific designer, Tim Demuth.

A well designed and simple leaflet issued by London Transport in Autumn 1972 describing the services and stations on London Underground's relatively new Victoria line from Walthamstow to Brixton; the first phase had opened in 1968/69 with the Brixton section being completed in 1971. It gives details of fares (in the, again, relatively new decimal currency) as well as service intervals that show what a step change there has been in terms of delivery and train intervals in recent years.

The leaflet was designed in LT's own Publicity Office but is, unusually credited to a specific designer, Tim Demuth.

Closed to the public since 1999, the Jubilee Line platforms at Charing Cross Underground Station are now used as location sets for films and television production

London Transport Museum Depot Open Day
Sign collection
1926 Enamel map of the Underground railways

I'm glad I've rediscovered my copy of this design icon although I was almost tempted to post it here with a 'spot the difference' title.

The recent edition of the 'tube' map now contains many more lines and in many ways this is a godo thing from a passenger and journey options standpoint. However, the diagram is now arguably very heavily cluttered what with Thameslink, Elizabeth line, Tramlink and particularly fares zones and it does, I think, now need a radical rethink. You can stretch Beck's idea so far before even it breaks and at the end of the day utility has to be matched by clarity.

It was the idea of clarity that led to this very short lived trial version that was officially issued for a short time in September 2009 and was the outcome of various discussions at, I'm sure, Managing Director level. The most obvious thing is - no fares zones. So the diagram is very clear. The one thing that threw most folk was - no River Thames. The latter is an odd one - why have a single geograph feature on the diagram? Indeed. But oddly the River does help define north and south London so perhaps...

It was also at the time - and we are apparently back here again - were income meant the map was sponsored. This one, that I 'claimed' was the one displayed in the special frame in reception at our then marvellous HQ, 55 Broadway.

Pathfinder

Bakerloo Line Tube Train
Underground TFL Carriage connecting Door
Transport for London.
England, UK.
youtu.be/kpAEonVeaAE

Extract from the 1956 issue quad royal London Underground Railways poster on display in the LT Museum Depot at Acton. The thicker route lines incorporating the line names variously appeared mainly on quad royal size diagrams from 1935 to 1959. I picked out this section as it includes my favourite part of the tube from Holborn and Aldwych to Waterloo. Trafalgar Square, Strand and Charing Cross as they were are shown.

Neil F.

The modest signature of the draughtsman who in 1931 conceived the London Underground diagram as we know it today.

This extract from the 1956 issue Quad Royal poster on display in the LT Museum Depot at Acton.

Neil F.

A rather unusual thing this - a tube map (or Railway Diagram to be precise) in a small multi-lingual "welcome/Bienvenue/Welkom" cover slip, issued "with the compliments of the London Transport Executive".

It smacks of the 1948 Olympic Games or the 1951 Festival of Britain and it could have been a hangover from 1948 even if this has a 1950 map in it. The map cover has the "Railways" version of the roundel as at the time there was a bit of a post-nationalisation tussle as to what to "brand" the Underground within the new Executive.

A rather fine, geographical based tube 'map' of Central London and one that appears as a fold out to a small brochure issued to mark the opening of the new Underground extensions from Finsbury Park station (the old terminus of the GNP&BR) out as far as Arnos Grove station. This station opened on 19 September 1932 as the intermediate terminus of the line prior to the final extension north towards Cockfosters in 1933. This important work, along with the western extensions out towards Hounslow and Uxbridge, wa sthe final flourish of the Underground Group prior to the 1933 formation of the new London Passenger Transport Board (London Transport) and was the culmination of several important improvements to the tube network during the late 1920s and early '30s that was effectively backed by Government loans that allowed the privately owned 'Combine' to improve existing lines and expand outwards into new suburbs.

The map is interesting - the year before the Beck diagram of 1933 - and is by the designer and company employee F H Stingemore who undertook much of the mapping work at this date and carried on, post-Beck, with many of the geographical maps found in things like Country Walks books.

The nomenclature of the 'lines' is interesting as some have migrated to 'line' from 'railway' and the messy compromise of what was to become the Northern line, in 1938, has yet to be fixed. The Victoria and Jubilee lines, and the changes to the Bakerloo of 1939, have yet to appear and there are various stations that have vanished - interestingly Down St has already gone but Brompton Rd is still here. Various changes of names have occurred - and on the Piccadilly & Central lines the new interchange station at Holborn is on the verge of opening and so this is one of the last appearances of British Museum station.

The 'jazzy border' is similar to several Underground maps of the period and may have originated on some of the MacDonald Gill maps in the 1920s?

I thought it would be interesting to see two London Underground diagrams (or 'London Transport Railways maps' as the cover has it) a decade apart - 1938 and 1948. They're of interest in various ways if only to see the different approaches in the design and layout that was actually a common feature of the diagram at the time. H C Beck, the man credited with developing the diagram in 1932/3, is credited with the 1948 diagram but no name appears on the 1938 one. In afct the 1938 one, with the airbrushed 'zones' is credited to Hans Schleger, the designer also known as Zero, and Beck appears not to have been happy at the changes wrought to his basic design at the time, if he was ever consulted.

The actual layout does show that the thinking being the geometry of the map did alter as did the precise graphic detail such as in line and station deliniation. The other major feature shown on both these maps are the proposed extensions to the Bakerloo, Central and Northern lines that formed part of the 1935/40 New Works Programme that was the backbone of LT's first major investment programme - and as it sadly turned out their last. The outbreak of war in 1938 was to have major ramifications for the extensions. That of the Bakerloo shown in 1938 was opened in 1939 (although the possible southern extension shown on niether of these maps was never to go ahead). The Northern - well, some elements north of Highgate towards High Barnet and Mill Hill East would open in 1940 but the others shown, famously, were cancelled in post-war austerity and with the tightening of the Metropolitan Green Belt that seriously undermined the traffic potential of the Bushey Heath branch.

The Central, strangely in some ways, was extended after 1946 eastwards and well into the Green Belt towards Epping and Ongar although this was not new construction as in the case of the Bushey Heath branch but electrification of the existing main line branch. To the west the Central's new tracks parallel to the existing GWR lines to West Ruilsip were completed but the Denham extension seen on the 1938 map was not to happen, again due to Green Belt concerns.

There are of course a lot of other changes and alterations especialy when compared with modern maps. Several stations have seen name changes - such as Chigwell Lane to Debden and of course the Bakerloo's northern branch to Stanmore that in 1938 was on the verge of being transferred from the Metropolitan line, would in 1979 itself be transferred to the Jubilee. The other major change that would occur in 1962 was the loss of services to Aylesbury (already cut back there in c1935) that would be taken over by British Railways from Marylebone. The rest - well, there's lots more and so I'll let you all look!