New National Rail Map

[JamieLei]

It appears that the National Rail map has been updated (the one you find in the back of your diary next to the Tube map).

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tocs_maps ... orkmap.pdf

Highlights include:

Elimination of bends between Reading and Penzance
Massive investment in flyovers around Birmingham
Reduction in journey times between Glasgow and Stranrear
The elimination of the Walsall to Birmingham serice
Blackpool to Hull via Leeds now runs on a dead-straight line to increase linespeed
Ashford is now a far more important destination than Croydon

Overall I think it's generally awful - it tries to incorporate far too muchdetail into it, and the station lines look pretty crap. But the introduction of the line names is a nice idea

[Badger]

Is there no piccies?

[JamieLei]

Is there no piccies?

My bad - completely forgot to post the link!

[Badger]

Is there no piccies?

My bad - completely forgot to post the link!

Heh, easily done.

Gah, I do hate stylised maps. They give a misleading impression.

[Ameecher]

considering they've straightened everything else out to leave the Bittern line to show that there is a reversal at Cromer to get to Sheringham seems fairly pointless. Local maps have given up on this long since and it implies that to get to Sheringham from Norwich a change is required which is NEVER the case.

Edit: the mixture of curves and angles confuses me somewhat. There seems to be no logic to it.

[Kevo00]

That's very badly designed, and seemed to be full of inconsistency, especially in the South-East. What was wrong with the old BR one, which used to be very clear?

[Badger]

What was wrong with the old BR one, .....?

Nail on the head right there, because it was the BR one.

[Kevo00]

They've really made a mess out of that then; the old BR one used to be quite nice, with the lines in red with consistent thickness between main and minor lines, and insets for urban areas instead of showing too much detail on them. For instance, the Cathcart Circle in Glasgow is on that map but useless because the scale is too small to show any stations on it!

[beeb375]

That IS bloody awful. No consistency as stated, hard to read, generally an absolute mess.

[JamieLei]

Also there doesn't seem to be any thought as to the importance of the lines. The Brighton Main Line, arguably the most congested line is less important than single-track Coventry - Leamington. Also I love how the c2c line and London Bridge - Croydon lines are just as important as the Fort William Line. Quite why the Durham Coast Line is as important as the ECML I have no idea.

[Kevo00]

Lol, worse Thameslink is shown as being about as important as the Mallaig branch!

Why didn't they make the thickness according to passenger train frequency? Otherwise such a map is simply bad advertising when Percy Passenger discovers that there is only a train every hour to Sunderland, and only three a day from London.

[Nawdic]

I think it looks good, albeit a bit crowded...

[teccuk]

I quite liked it as far as an exercise in graphic design goes.

Map design is a very interesting question, who is the map for? Is it for those interested in the network or the general public? There's some good research from UWE transport and society school. Unless you map literate all maps are a challenge. But the tube map is pretty much the most accessible. Unfortunately it makes people do things like take the tube between Piccadily and Covent Garden instead of a 5 min walk... And diagrammatic maps are also not much good for buses, although London have done a good job, you still generally need to know the exact route of the bus and what streets it serves.

Back on topic, I can't think for the life of me think why they thought this attractive but chaotic and overly complicated map would be better than the old version....

It might just be away to get rid of FWT who are expensive and can sometimes be quite aggressive (even trying to claim they own the copyright to the tube map a few yeas back!). I think FWT did the old one.... might be wrong.

[welshdragon]

It's been done by Projectmapping, which also does other maps in the same style, i actually find his maps clear to use. and the website explains the concept - [url]http://www.projectmapping.co,uk[/url]

[teccuk]

Very interesting website.

I see their point...

[Ameecher]

Creates a clear impression of the network by showing the ‘bones’ of the system as straight lines with the minimum of direction changes

One place this falls down is Leeds to London. The map currently indicates that the best route is via the MML rather than the much more frequent and faster route via the ECML.

[teccuk]

Hmm. Form over function.

Birmingham is a bit messy... do passengers need to know what route around Birmingham the train takes?

[JamieLei]

Personally I quite like the New York Subway map. They experimented for a while with schematics, but in the end decided to do correct positioning of station locations and allow curvy lines all over the place. The effect is far less clumsy that you might expect, especially compared to the previous schematic.

http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/submap.htm

[teccuk]

Ooh no. It must be my least favourite system map So messy. (Well Tokyo's comes close).

I think my favourite was Madrid, but they changed it recently.

Old version: http://subway.umka.org/map-madrid.html

[orudge]

You clearly just have far too many railways in England. The representation of the lines on the map in Scotland isn't too bad, in my opinion.