Beck's Map with 2020 network

Though perhaps the urgency may be greater in the opposite direction!

Beck's original map featured some sharp corners too. It certainly captures his style. I agree it's next to useless for modern day route planning outside Zone 1 without the Overground etc, but as a piece of art and a comparison with the original it's great work.

He mentioned he suspected there were a couple of mistakes. Hard to spot in your own work that you've stared at for many hours! I'll feed back via Twitter.

When I managed the first computer generated Tube map in the 1980s we used a cartographer to establish a set of rules for curves, angles and intersections. Previous maps had been tweaked over the years when changes were required and there were lots of anomalies.

This was incorporated into a design manual for future Tube maps.

Sadly this has been consigned to the bin in recent years.

Hello everyone!
Thanks for all your comments and suggestions, it's very much appreciated. I'll respond to them one by one below:


whistlekiller2000
Yes, I have not included any Overground, TfL Rail, Trams or DLR services as I chose to focus solely on the Underground, mainly for 3 reasons. 1, it is more suited to the 1931 map, where only the Underground was included; the map would get very crowded if I included more services, and the colours of each line would be harder to distinguish from each other; and I started the recreation off by tracing the original map, so adding extra services would remove the space needed for station names.
I am however working on 2 more maps, one that is traced from the current official map with only the colours and font changed (although trams services will not be included), another map that only includes the different overground services.


Chris M
This section of the map has been traced nearly exactly as how it was on the original Harry Beck, which was a conscience decision so as to stick to Harry Beck's style.


Dstock7080
Thank you for bringing this up, these were mistakes. I accidentally made West Kensington an interchange between the District and Piccadilly lines, but after releasing my mistake I removed the Piccadilly line blob but failed to remove the District line one. As for Southfields, I have accidentally interpreted the step-free access blob as an interchange blob, and have now removed it.

The corrected map is shown below, and a high-resolution version (only to be used for personal uses, such as a desktop background) is available at this link:
gum.co/VqvAP
It is free to download, but donations are very much appreciated.

This was quite a personal decision on my behalf. I am often confused why some shared stations have the interchange blob, while some don't. One good example I can think of is Gloucester Road and South Kensington while are right next to each other, but the former doesn't have an interchange blob, while the latter does.
I don't intend on changing that on my map (will be fairly difficult to change), but if you have a good explanation as to why this is I would love to hear it.

South Ken is cross-platform between Circle and District in opposing directions, and same platform for same direction. Escalators are provided to the Piccadilly, of pretty good capacity.

Gloucester Road is separate platforms for westbound Circle/District services, and cross-platform only for eastbound Circle/District to westbound/Outer Rail Circle. Interchange to Piccadilly is via lifts and stairs, which also mixes with any interchange between westbound District and other SSR routes.

Far better to get people to interchange via South Ken.

An interesting interchange anomaly is also Kennington, which has a blob, whilst (say) Finchley Central does not. Woodford/Hainault should probably also have one with the upcoming changes. I’d actually retain the one at Kennington but add a second, Camden (current map) style interchange if the Battersea route is under construction, as trains won’t be able to run there ex Bank which is currently suggested.

I’m also intrigued as to what dictates the colour of the connector diamonds - why are most on the top side of the Circle in Met maroon, yet King’s across is pink? There’s a few options that could be used to apply these consistently, but none of those options appear to have been used exclusively.

There was a sort of loose set of rules that I had in my mind. Usually, I would use the colour that would be the most legible as text over the background, which is why I used the Metropolitan purple at most of the stations where it links with the Circle. However, in densely compacted areas, like in zone 1, I would sometimes use a different colour so as to reduce confusion of what label belongs to what interchange blob. At King's Cross, there was a slight chance that the label for Euston Square may be confused for that blob (obviously if you look closely you would see the gap, but at a quick glance there is a chance of confusion).
Another example of this is on the Central line where all the station names are quite close together, so at any point that the Central line intersects with another line, I used the colour of the other lines (i.e. green at Notting Hill Gate, black at Totteham Court Road, and so on), with the only exception being Stratford as the West Ham label is very close.

I would suggest reading Max Roberts' book

www.tubemapcentral.com/writing/umu.html

On first sight, the only element that jarred with me was the treatment of the Thames at the Isle of Dogs. The use of a semi-circle seems to be contrary to all of Beck’s design ethos. That apart, and allowing for the odd errors already noted, I like it.

I'm going to be honest, I don't like the curve either, but it would be impossible to fit in the Canary Wharf station while not going off the map, so it was more of a necessity.

I think the official modern map is way too crowded, and I don't want mine to end up the same so I don't intend on adding Crossrail or DLR services to this specific map

You could probably make quite a nice one including the DLR if you didn't mind going more landscape.

It would waste space on a monitor but look really good in print.

The big problem would be with the overground, as that cuts across so many of the 'radial' lines to the north.

I'm more than happy with the version which shows only what it claims to show; the Underground.
That designation is still in place, irrespective of its relevance to today's transport scene.
Diagrams shewing anything else are 'travel maps', or some such.