The Map Room

Mark Ovenden reports that his new book, Railway Maps of the World, is now available; there’s an interview with him about the book on National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog.

Previously: Railway Maps of the World.

Update, May 7: A brief article about the book, plus images, in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Update, May 9: BBC News has a short video about the book, narrated by Mark.

Update, May 11: Chicago Tribune review.

• Buy Railway Maps of the World at Amazon.com (Canada, UK)

Cameron Booth has previously done an Amtrak route map and a map of the U.S. Interstates in the style of a subway diagram; more recently, he’s done a system map of the French high-speed rail network — “all the high speed train routes that pass through France. This includes the French (SNCF) TGV trains, the Eurostar trains from London, the Thalys services from Belgium and the Netherlands, and some ICE services from Germany that operate in tandem with corresponding TGV services from France.” (He’s also done a new version of his Interstate map.)

Mark Ovenden announced on Twitter today that his next book, Railway Maps of the World, will be available soon. (According to Amazon and the publisher’s website, next month.) I’ve known about this for a couple of months now and am very much looking forward to laying hands on a copy. If you’re familiar with Ovenden’s work — I reviewed his Paris Underground and Transit Maps of the World — you will be too.

• Buy Railway Maps of the World at Amazon.com (Canada, UK)

A nice collection of maps of the British passenger rail network in PDF format, both diagrammatic (think Beck’s Tube map on a national scale) and geographic, on the National Rail Enquiries website. Via @maptd.

Dmitry Adamskiy’s Cheap Tickets Map shows that the differences in rail ticket prices in Great Britain don’t always correlate with distance — sometimes it’s cheaper to go farther. I thought only airlines did that. Via Oliver.

Cameron Booth writes: “A while ago, you featured my U.S. Interstates as London Underground Diagram poster on The Map Room. Along a similar line, here’s a link to my latest project: a subway-style map of Amtrak’s passenger rail routes….  •  Continue reading this entry.

La Cartoteca links to InterRail’s maps of the European railway network. The maps are PDFs (they’re essentially verso/recto pages of a single-sheet map) and show major network connections and cities….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Centred on Zürich, this site provides real-time positions of Swiss trains — the icons freaking move — based on their schedules. “The current view is based on the Swiss train timetable, and does not yet show the actual GPS-positions…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The National Association of Railroad Passengers, a passenger rail lobby group, has a collection of maps showing the change in Amtrak route coverage since the national rail carrier was created in 1971. The PDF maps are rather basic, and show…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Railway Association of Canada produces maps and atlases of Canadian (and North American) rail lines; I’ve got a 1999 edition of a single-sheet map that covers all Canadian and major U.S. tracks. Some of their maps are available…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A new book from the University of Chicago Press looks interesting: Cartographies of Travel and Navigation, edited by James R. Akerman, a collection of essays about the history of all kinds of transportation-related maps — railroads, roads, nautical and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This series of maps of European rail networks differs from other railway maps I’ve seen in that they show not only double-tracking, but also electrification (including voltages), which is not something I previously thought significant, or at least significant…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Amtrak’s previous online attempts at a network map have generally been large PDFs or JPEGs (see previous entry), but they’ve just announced a new, Flash-based interactive route atlas that is much improved over its static predecessors. Click on a route…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Atlas of Alberta Railways is a collection of historical maps showing the development of railroad lines in Alberta (and western Canada); there are more than 200 maps available through a surprisingly good Flash interface. This is not a collection…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Last year I covered the first volume in Richard Carpenter’s series of historical railroad atlases covering the United States in 1946. I actually got it for Christmas last year: because I’m not familiar with the mid-Atlantic states the first volume…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This page shows the real-time position of trains in the Greater Copenhagen commuter rail network. The trains are colour-coded to show how on time or late they are. Note that the page uses Java. (Nicolas Jasson hid this gem in…  •  Continue reading this entry.

My interest in railroads in the Pacific Northwest led me to this site about the British Columbia Electric Railway, an interurban that at its peak stretched across the Fraser Valley. It’s got a page of maps dating from, or showing,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Before and After the Beeching Axe: in 1963 the Beeching Report recommended the closure of a number of rail services in the UK. This page at Joyce’s World of Transport Eclectica has maps related to that report, showing the state…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Nicolas Jasson has submitted a frighteningly impressive number of links to Japanese rail and transit maps. His e-mail, which I’ve edited to incorporate links into the text, is as follows: I am very interested in railways and transit and Japanese…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Amtrak’s system map (768 KB PDF), which looks like it’s been redone recently, shows routes and cities, but it doesn’t indicate which trains serve a given city and route. The schematic on Wikipedia, however, does just that. Via Railroad.net’s Amtrak…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A homemade New York subway map that includes other railroads and is based on the London diagram. Says the designer: My design goals were to present a simple, clear diagram of all the passenger railroads in the city and just…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This site about the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (now a part of Union Pacific) has a better-than-average collection of maps: not only system maps, but also USGS relief and topo maps, insurance maps, and more. More than enough…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Guilford Rail System web site has a page of maps of two of its predecessor railroads: a 1916 map of the Boston and Maine (853 KB JPEG) and a 1923 map of the Maine Central (456 KB JPEG). I…  •  Continue reading this entry.

And finally, and somewhat more recently, the last link tonight that I’ve stolen from the Here Be Dragons community at LiveJournal is this doozy of a map of the railroads of the former Soviet Union. Different colours represent different kinds…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Not that I can read a word on the page, but these maps of Taiwanese railways appear to date from 1925 to 1947 (via inflight correction)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Also via Things Magazine, a scan of an 1870 system map (large JPEG) of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, from a site that archives timetables of New Jersey railroads….  •  Continue reading this entry.

And while I’m at it — boy, do my obsessions ever spill out on this site — here’s the system map for the modern-day Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. Map details are in PDF format and show stations and track…  •  Continue reading this entry.

An extensive web site about the Great Northern Railway in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley includes reproductions of 1890s-era maps of railroads in the Pacific Northwest and early twentieth-century maps of the Fraser Valley region….  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’m doing a little research into the Kettle Valley Railway, a subsidiary of the CPR that operated in southern B.C. Joe Smuin prepared a map, which is available online, for his book about the railway….  •  Continue reading this entry.

CN has an interactive map of their rail network on their site. There’s also a series of maps in their shortlines section — shortlines being small railroads formed after a big railroad like CN has sold off parts of its…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This month’s Fast Company has a profile of Richard Carpenter, who has published the first volume of his Railroad Atlas of the United States in 1946. The maps are hand-drawn and hand-lettered; the article provides fascinating details about their creation….  •  Continue reading this entry.