Mapping Britain’s Railways: 7 iconic rail diagrams explored in new book
When is a map not a map? When it is a schematic rail diagram.
Co-authors Mark Ovenden and Andrew Smithers explain the difference in Mapping Britain’s Railways: “Well-designed diagrams will have a sense of aesthetic balance between lines and typography. Their overriding imperative is to inform the passenger of the connections between destinations at a glance, rather than a slavish requirement to follow the topography.”
Harry Beck, with his 1933 London Underground depiction, may be the most famous practitioner, but he was not the first. In the drawing offices of British railway companies, skilled draughtspeople were already working to improve passenger information.
Why were they going to all this trouble? Because of “the intense competition between private companies, desperate to prove that their route was the swiftest, easiest or most direct”, Ovenden and Smithers explain in the book.
And now, as printed maps are on the way out, the future is digital, with a new generation of designers taking up this niche discipline. Here, they highlight seven game-changing designs from the book:
1907 Midland Railway poster
The London Underground was not the first railway to use a diagram to present its routes: Victorian and Edwardian private rail companies were at each other’s throats extolling the virtues of their services.
Posters with exaggerated claims of the directness or swiftness of a route were driven by schematic representations of the track trajectory. In some cases, like this 1907 Midland Railway example extracted from a poster, passengers could be fooled into thinking it was a track without bends between London and Carlisle.
Mid-1950s ‘Dowagram’ style schematic by Vic Welch
London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) clerk George Dow produced two stylised diagrams for the company’s complex network of suburban services in 1929 (several years before Harry Beck’s iconic Underground one).
He went on to design many diagrams for LNER and the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), and his style was adapted in the 1950s by Vic Welch, who designed at least a dozen ‘Dowagrams’ for British Railways’ London Midland Region. The complexity of lines around Merseyside was clarified with ease by this simplification of routes using the Dowagram style.
1962 Principal Passenger Timetable diagram of Scotland
Given early cartographic experiments with ironing out Britain’s meandering rail lines, it is odd that the entire network was not usually shown in schematic form. But for British Railways’ 1962 Principal Passenger Services Timetable, that was rectified.
Although many small branch lines were omitted (making the cartographers’ work easier), ignoring geographic kinks by drawing straight lines at multiple angles clearly brought some clarity to the picture. Scotland, shown here (and opposite was England and Wales), felt more navigable by a clear diagram.
Eastern Region poster diagram from 1963
British Railways (BR) Eastern Region applied schematics to its entire area (branch lines and all) in a 1963 wall map poster. Inserts were required due to line complexity in South Yorkshire and the Home Counties.
Nevertheless, even keeping to multiple angles (rather than the 45 degrees used for the Underground) still led to some congested parts (for example, around Doncaster and Chesterfield) or station names being placed over the route lines (eg., Spalding), which is generally a no-no for diagram designers. This was an improvement on previous BR maps of the Eastern Region, although it was not adopted by other regions at the time.
British Rail local diagram for West Riding, 1972
The formation of Passenger Transport Executives (PTEs) covering major provincial urban areas caused much mapping experimentation, and the diagram became a go-to option for cities trying to promote their commuter lines.
Some were created before the PTE was even formed, like this distinctive and colourful diagram for the former West Riding, made by British Rail’s in-house team in 1972 (two years before West Yorkshire PTE was formed). It clearly borrows (not altogether successfully, perhaps, in this case) from the Underground style, with ticks for stations and large circles for interchanges.
Rodney Mylius InterCity diagram, 1989
The authors chose Rodney Mylius’s groundbreaking 1989 InterCity diagram for their book cover not only because of its historical significance, but also its great and simple beauty. Husband-and-wife team Newell & Sorrell were employed in 1987 by Dr John Prideaux, British Rail’s inter-city director, to develop a new graphic identity for the brand.
Their creative director, Rodney Mylius, realised “the brief was to create a national ‘Underground’ style map for InterCity… [to reflect] the shape of the UK, so you see Britain in it.” The result was arguably British Rail’s most distinctive diagram, impacting maps for the next two decades. Mapping Britain’s Railways‘ cover uses Network Rail’s Strategic Routes hues as a colourful homage to Mylius’s landmark creation.
Network SouthEast’s first diagram, 1986
Arguably the second most powerful rail diagram in British Railways’ history was created as a marketing tool for a newly branded sector covering the capital and Home Counties. Launched in summer 1986, Network SouthEast needed a powerful map that both borrowed from the graphic iconography of the London
Underground diagram and extended it almost seamlessly. Allan Cooper Design Associates consciously made Dorset, East Anglia, the Kent Coast and South Midlands feel like they were just a hop away from London, using ticks for stations and Underground-style interchange symbols. The design became the backdrop for major passenger growth.
Project Mapping national diagram, 2023
Rail privatisation from 1994 to 1997 balkanised our once national system into a series of train operating companies, each with its own in-house graphic style. Mapping Britain’s Railways shows a map from each of those (the first time this has been achieved).
The Association of Train Operating Companies adopted a national design by Project Mapping in 2008, at first for the website and later for much of Network Rail cartography. Its founder, Andrew Smithers, book co-author, used additional angles to simplify its appearance. He improved and updated the map until its replacement by a new digital product (also shown for the first time in print in this book) in 2025.
Mapping Britain’s Railways is published by British Library Publishing.