Timetables & Route Finder

Some good work there - I found it very readable and understandable.

Do you have one for Prince Regent (i know it's like Beckton Park)

It all looks too complicated for me. I'm looking at the DLR route diagram, and I'm inclined to think it's become complex enough to warrant route colours.

My 'sort-of-local' suburban electric railway is far simpler, and has had route colours for YONKS.

www.newcastlegateshead.com/xsdbimgs/metro_map.pdf

Well, if you notice I proposed coloured route arrows for each destination. The destinations/termini are backed in the same colour as the arrows that point the way on the line diagram.

The colours aren't intended to be consistent from station to station (or branch to branch), just different enough to distinguish when looking at the poster at your starting or interchange station.

Who knows though, one day perhaps multicoloured LED destination "blinds" could be installed on the trains, and a coloured arrow displayed next to the destination (which would remain in amber).

Credit where credit is due creamtfl, your posters and maps are actually very, very good. If not perfect and one I would use on my tube system if I were to ever run one!

Toby

I find this one to be even better readable.

Canning Town version:

db.tt/n6rGU8uz

Actually it does. You may have to zoom in a bit to fully appreciate that but the 'curve' from the Beckton line to the Stratford International line just to the left of Canning Town is there.

I think it just illustrates the point about how difficult it is to make these diagrams both comprehensive and clear. Kudos to creamtfl for his excellent efforts.

Now that I've seen the official notification of this weekend's service alterations, I've modified my closure poster to suit. Just to prove that my diagram is flexible enough to be altered for Engineering Works.

dl.dropbox.com/u/51034087/DLREWPoster_20130202.pdf

EDIT: Also...

dl.dropbox.com/u/51034087/DLREWPoster_20130323.pdf

Still difficult to beat Johnson tho'!

Although I think creamtfl's designs are quite brilliant in presenting what is now really a very complex system, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that if this were a freestanding system in an averagely-sized city, it would by now have its own coloured or numbered route diagram.
The same might be said for LOROL, too, these days. Bolting them onto the tube map as a network of undifferentiated coloured lines is pretty confusing for anyone but the initiated. Don't suppose tho' that TfL will do anything bold...

G

Giving LO separately identified routes shouldn't be hard as the only complexity is that the West London Line sometimes acts as a branch of the North London Line and sometimes doesn't.
The DLR as has been said many times is more complicated though as the route pattern is far more flexible. Perhaps each possible route should be numbered and listed with a note that not all services run all the time. Something like

Alternatively/Additionally the common short workings (Canning Town, Canary Wharf, Greenwich, Mudchute, Blackwall, Poplar, Prince Regent) could be separately identified, but that's probably getting too complicated

I don't see a problem with giving the normal routes their own identities but alloiwing for out of course diversions from one "line" (or route) to another. the SSLm often do it, as it is not unknown for example to see a High St Ken train at Hammersmith or a Wimbldeon at Baker Street. If necessary potential unusual services can be shown by a dotted line as is done at Kennington or East Finchley, (but not for the Watford north curve). Passengers can use the line diagrams to work out the usual service, but thye destination on the front of the train and the PIDs will tell them the rest.

I grew up in a city where all the bus routes radiated from the city centre but because of the layout of the bus station most buses actually went through the middle, so an inbound No 9 might become an outbound No4 or No12. In practice the drivers would display the outbound route on the inbound leg. Consequently i got used to going home on a No 9 but into town the bus might call itself anything. What mattered was where it was going, niot what line it called itself.

DLR is a little more complicfated because there is no central core through which all trains pass. But it is now too complicated to show as one - the break up of the Met into four separate lines took over 50 years but no-one would want to go back to the 1940s version now. On the D:LR in particular it is diffiocuilt fro tyhe unititiated to work out Stratford - what through services are possible and which require a change? - and Canning Town, where it is not obvious at first glance (even on creamtfl's latest version) that all four permutations are possible. I would number the lines - as it happens this is roughly in order of opening but there is more logic in it than that:

Line 1 Stratford - Lewisham
Line 2 Bank - Lewisham
Line 3 Bank - Woolwich
Line 4 Tower - Beckton
Line 5 Stratford Int - Beckton
Line 6 Startford Int - Woolwich

Note that for ease of recollection services on the same branch, with one exception, have consecutive numbers. The exception is an easy to remember 3/6. Thus Mudchute is on lines 1 and 2, Shadwell on lines 2,3,and 4, etc
Short workings take the same number as the full journey.
Odd workings would take the number of their destination: so a train from Tower to Lewisham would be a "2". In some cases it might be better to "reform" after passing tyhe old delta junction to avoid confusion - e.g a Lewisham to Tower and Lewisham to Beckton could both be a "4" - in the same way a Barking to Wimbledon via Baker Street would confuse people if it were called a District Line train before it reached Aldgate East

And to be pedantic (who? moi!) since the last minor timetable changes at the end of January, southbound trains from Bank don't stop at WIQ until after 21:00

Very interesting, I didn't know that!