On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:52:03 +0100, 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.

I'm not convinced by your limited attempt with the Paddington lines. I
agree with you that it does not stand out well enough and using such
thin lines will cause problems for those of us with less than perfect
colour vision when lines cross over each other. I can cope with the
tube map perfectly well because it so bold and clear in its use of
colour.

I think there needs to be a decision as to whether you just want to show
a mini network as one colour into one terminal station or if you wish to
attempt to show service patterns as per the tube map and that old
Southern Railway map that was in a post yesterday.

I liked the old SR map because it showed the service pattern. I'm not
terribly familiar with the service pattern in South London and giving
that information clearly using colour was a genuine help. The Overground
map with trains per hour is moderately helpful but is confusing at
certain points where numbers of train per hour suddenly increase at key
stations but then decline either side of that station. You get no sense
of what trains run where.

I realise the service pattern option would get very busy in South London
and some parts of North London and this might mean having two maps to
deal with it. If you could get sufficient clarity / scale to
accommodate service patterns then it should be possible to show the
frequency of trains per hour for each service which would allow people
to better see how frequently direct trains ran vis a vis the options of
changing at somewhere like Lewisham or Clapham Junction or Sutton.

If you wished to show just one colour for a group of lines then the
other option is to designate service patterns with route codes (like the
RER) and show which codes stop at which station. To some extent we used
to have this with headcodes but, of course, the public are so thick as
to not understand what they mean (well according to railway company
market research!).

I applaud your efforts for trying and hope you come up with a neat
solution.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!