On Jul 10, 10:52 am, Tom Anderson wrote:
Right,

All that stuff about maps got me thinking. It should be possible to colour
in the lines on the London Connections map to show which termini trains
run to. Since i'm a dab hand with the Gimp, i thought i'd give it a go
myself. Here's the first draft, which so far only has the Paddington lines
done:

http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/tmp/Lon...(Coloured).png

Apologies for the weird look; i had to rasterise the PDF to edit it, and
it's come out funny (blame Ghostscript!).

The reason i'm posting it with one line done (well, two, as i'm planning
to do Thameslink in black!) is to ask: does this look completely rubbish
or what? I think colouring in the edges of the quite thin NR lines isn't
visually strong enough. Am i wasting my time doing it like this? An
alternative route would be to dig out Illustrator and see if i can make
the lines a bit thicker.

For those who care, i'm picking colours by associating each terminus with
a tube line, based on the area served, and copying its colour. I'm
currently thinking:

Paddington - H&C
Marylebone - Metropolitan
Euston - Bakerloo
St Pancras - Northern (Thameslink is like the Northern line of railways)
King's Cross - Piccadilly
Moorgate - as King's Cross
Liverpool Street - Central
Fenchurch Street - Jubilee
London Bridge - East London
Cannon Street - as London Bridge
Blackfriars - Northern (as St Pancras)
Charing Cross - as London Bridge
Waterloo - District
Victoria - Victoria (hey, it's a link!)
orbital lines - Circle

I'm not totally convinced about Fenchurch Street and London Bridge, or the
orbital lines.

tom


This is actually based on the zones map, which doesn't attempt to
diagram the routes, it simply shows which stations the zones are in
and some rather bizarre routes between them (like the weird branch to
Hither Green between Lewisham and Blackheath).

There is a London Connections map which would be a more useful
starting point and includes the zones as well.

The diagram that's been given out with the National Rail timetable for
years always had a kind of attempt at colouring routes according to
terminus, but the trouble is that it can result in having to have
parallel lines along certain routes, or else sillinesses like having a
colour for Charing Cross/Cannon Street and then saying that the route
from Dartford to Victoria is really covered by Charing Cross services
that go to Victoria, rather than have two colours along the
Bexleyheath line.

In the end, the grouping of services by TOC (or former BR division) is
more likely to correspond to some kind of operational reality without
creating incredible complication.