You love the tube map, but sometimes it frustrates you, right? Sure, it’s a useful navigator. But it doesn’t tell you where the stations are. And it doesn’t tell you how far away one set of platforms is from another.
- June 1, 2017
- By Jack May
You could honestly waste hours looking at this map. I'd know, I have done. Image: Franklin Jarrier
It most certainly doesn’t tell you how the tracks curve between one station and another, and gives no indication whatsoever of other highly useful things – like where the sidings are, and where your local depot’s at.
Cry no more.
Because there is another map that shows London's underground, overground, DLR, tramlink, and national rail lines – tracks, stations, platforms, sidings and depots – in all their glory.
Thanks to the work of Franklin Jarrier, whose website is an impressive collection of transport knowledge. The full map is available here – but seeing as you're reading this already we might as well share some of its best features with you.
It colours lines according to which services they run, and shows platform positions and numbers within stations.
Click any of these to expand. All images: Franklin Jarrier.
Like here, at Richmond.
And just next to North Sheen you can also see that it shows where level crossings are. Neat, huh?
It also seems to hint at some state secrets, or something. I see the words 'military depot' and it makes me feel excited (and, well, scared).
At various places it can offer some useful guidance for station navigation. Especially with the bigguns:
King's Cross St Pancras. A huge muddle, made less muddling.
Or Baker Street, the station with the most underground platforms.
It also shows some fun bits of track, like the Kennington loop on the Northern line.
And the old branch of the Jubilee line to Charing Cross, which dates from before the extension to Stratford:
And as you may have noticed, it tells you how old every bit of track is, which is very phenomenally cool. And also shows all the closed stations, platforms, and stations that never opened at all. Which is good.
Depots! Everyone loves depots.
Neasden depot is absolutely massive.
You can see where the Victoria line emerges from the tunnel to head to the Northumberland Park depot – the only above-ground section of the line.
Eurostar's engineering centre. Cool, right?
So agonisingly close to connecting the Northern line with the Wimbledon-Sutton railway. Tease.
And that's pretty much it, though the map also helps you make sense of some of the really messy parts of the network. Like Willesden Junction and Old Oak Common:
Or Stratford:
And here's the really cool bendy bit of the Central line that goes around the Bank of England, meaning one curvy platform with a lot minding the gap needing doing.
So yeah. Good map, right? Hours of fun.
Go forth, find fun little tidbits, and tweet them at us. If you must.
Jack May is a regular contributor to CityMetric and tweets as @JackO_May.
