Official and Unofficial German Rail Network Maps Compared

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn
u/theflyingindonesian
u/theflyingindonesian

On the left, Deutsche Bahn’s official network map of all Intercity and Intercity Express routes in Germany (PDF). On the right, a much more ambitious map of said network by Reddit user theflyingindonesian. Cameron Booth much prefers the unofficial map: while the official map is “incredibly average” (a putdown I will have to make a point of remembering), the unofficial map is “a major upgrade” that is “infinitely superior” to the official map. “I particularly like the dead straight trajectory of the lines from Hamburg down to Fulda, and the clear treatment of the potentially difficult and convoluted Rhine-Ruhr area. I also like the way that the routes for trains that pass through major stations get a ghosted-back line to link the routes across the (sometimes very large) station rectangles.” I know which one I’d rather spend a long time staring at.

Tracking the Wuhan Coronavirus

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Johns Hopkins CSSE (screenshot)

Johns Hopkins University’s CSSE has created an interactive map and online dashboard to track the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. Details at their blog post:

The case data visualized is collected from various sources, including WHO, U.S. CDC, ECDC, China CDC (CCDC), NHC and DXY. DXY is a Chinese website that aggregates NHC and local CCDC situation reports in near real-time, providing more current regional case estimates than the national level reporting organizations are capable of, and is thus used for all the mainland China cases reported in our dashboard (confirmed, suspected, recovered, deaths). U.S. cases (confirmed, suspected, recovered, deaths) are taken from the U.S. CDC, and all other country (suspected and confirmed) case data is taken from the corresponding regional health departments. The dashboard is intended to provide the public with an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds, with transparent data sources.

The data is also downloadable. [Geography Realm/Maps Mania]

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has created a series of maps showing where the outbreak started and the nearby areas at risk.

Previously: The Washington Post Maps the Spread of the New Coronavirus.

Update, 31 Jan: Maps from the New York Times.

Night Trains

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Jug Cerović

Sleeper trains are making something of a comeback, with services being restored and expanded after years of cutbacks, at least in Europe. In what may not be a coincidence, Jug Cerović has created Night Trains, a collection of maps of overnight train services around the world, done in his usual, standardized schematic transit network design language. Prints are available.

Fire Destroys Columbus Globes Warehouse

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Columbus Globes, the century-old German globe manufacturer, lost its warehouse to a fire Thursday night. The 2,500-m2 building in Krauchenwies, Baden-Württemberg was completely destroyed, causing at least €1.5 million in damage. Police suspect arson: there have been a number of deliberately set fires in the Krauchenwies region in recent weeks—two at the Columbus site. News coverage (German only): DPA (Badische Zeitung, RTL, Süddeutsche Zeitung), SWR.

Celebrating Christopher Tolkien’s Cartographic Legacy

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

It turns out that I wasn’t finished talking about the maps drawn by Christopher Tolkien. My latest piece for Tor.com, “Celebrating Christopher Tolkien’s Cartographic Legacy,” went live at Tor.com this morning. It looks at the collaborative process between J. R. R. Tolkien and his son Christopher as father and son tried to make the narrative agree with the map, and vice versa; takes a deep dive into Christopher’s mapmaking technique; and tries to assess the impact of his maps on fantasy mapmaking.

Previously: Christopher Tolkien, 1924-2020.

An Update on Anton Thomas’s Map of North America

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Anton Thomas’s pictorial map of North America (previously) is now complete, and he’ll be selling giclée prints and posters from his website soon. (I know exactly where mine will be going.) In the above video, he looks at the multiyear process of creating the map—on paper, with pencils and pen, and how he had to correct and redraw (the inked parts!) as he went. Here’s an interview he did with Atlas Obscura last month.

xkcd: All South Americas

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Randall Munroe, “Bad Map Projection: South America.” xkcd, 17 Jan 2020.

xkcd is back with another bad map projection: in this one, it’s all South Americas. The alt-text: “The projection does a good job preserving both distance and azimuth, at the cost of really exaggerating how many South Americas there are.”

Previously: xkcd’s Time Zone Map; xkcd’s Liquid Resize Map Projection; xkcd’s United States Map.

Christopher Tolkien, 1924-2020

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Christopher Tolkien, map from The Fellowship of the Ring (Unwin, 1954). The British Library.

Christopher Tolkien, the third son of J. R. R. Tolkien and the executor of his literary estate and editor of his posthumous works, died yesterday at the age of 95. But one of his legacies is likely to be overlooked: he drew the map of Middle-earth that appeared in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings. That map proved hugely influential. It helped set the norm for subsequent epic fantasy novels: they would come with maps, and those maps would look rather a lot like the one drawn by Christopher Tolkien.

Christopher Tolkien himself was self-deprecating about the execution of his map, and about the design choices he made. Regarding a new version of the map he drew for Unfinished Tales, he took pains to emphasize that

the exact preservation of the style and detail (other than nomenclature and lettering) of the map that I made in haste twenty-five years ago does not argue any belief in the excellence of its conception or execution. I have long regretted that my father never replaced it by one of his own making. However, as things turned out it became, for all its defects and oddities, “the Map,” and my father himself always used it as a basis afterwards (while frequently noticing its inadequacies).

However hastily it was drawn, it was pivotal all the same.

A Modern-Day Tube Map in the Original Tube Map Style

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Arturs D.

There have been a lot of Beck-style maps—maps done in the style of the London underground map. This one’s a bit meta. Arturs D., a student living in London, has created a map of the present-day London underground using Harry Beck’s original style. The current TfL network map (PDF) is, of course, a Beck-type diagram, but there have been a lot of changes to the official map since 1933. It’s also a lot more complicated. Arturs’s map, which limits itself to the Tube proper, reminds us just how many changes there have been. [Mapping London]

Priore, Schulman Plead Guilty to Pittsburgh Rare Book and Map Thefts

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Between 1992 and 2017, more than 300 rare books, maps and other items were stolen from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library. News of the thefts broke in April 2018, and in July of that year former Carnegie Library archivist Gregory Priore and rare book seller John Schulman were arrested and charged.

Yesterday Priore and Schulman pled guilty: Priore to one count of theft by unlawful taking and receiving stolen property, Schulman to a charge of forgery and another of theft by deception and receiving stolen property. (They were facing a total of 10 and 20 charges respectively, but the remaining charges were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.)

Sentencing is scheduled to take place on April 17; each man faces up to 20 years in prison (the plea deal does not include sentencing).

News coverage: Associated Press, CNN, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Washington Post.

Previously: 314 Rare Books and Maps Stolen from Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; New Details Emerging in Pittsburgh Rare Book and Map Thefts; Arrests Made in Pittsburgh Rare Book and Map Thefts; Pittsburgh Rare Book and Map Theft Update.

Australia’s Bushfires and Misleading Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Whenever there’s a major news event, there will be an outbreak of fake, misattributed or misleading images that purport to be about that event. That goes for maps as well.

Take the serious situation with Australia’s bushfires at the moment. Social media is jammed with maps showing practically the whole damn continent on fire, or superimposed on another continent to let people there know just how big Australia is (and also on fire). It’s a profoundly serious situation, and as NASA’s Joshua Stevens points out, it’s possible to present an accurate map that shows its seriousness without resorting to hyperbole.

The trouble is, social media thrives on hyperbole, because it thrives on “engagement”—which means outrage and anger and, as Joshua Emmons notes, as we get inured to a certain level of outrage, even more outrage is needed just to get noticed.

Which brings me to this thing, which is showing up all over the social web:

Anthony Hearsey, Creative Imaging.

Continue reading “Australia’s Bushfires and Misleading Maps” →

GPS Glitch Grounds GoPro Drones

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

GoPro KarmaGoPro’s Karma drone, released in October 2016 and discontinued in January 2018 (when GoPro announced it was getting out of the drone business), has apparently fallen prey to the GPS rollover bug: they’ve been grounded since the new year. See coverage at DP Review, Engadget and The Verge, as well as  discussions at GoPro’s support website.

GoPro says they’re “actively troubleshooting” the issue; I have to say I’m surprised that a relatively new gadget—between two to three years old—could be hit by a once-every-19.7-year bug.

Previously: Happy GPS Week Rollover!