You need to know little about urban railways’ cartography to know the name Harry Beck, the creator of the circuit diagram-style map of the London Underground. You will probably also know that his simple concept has been utilised by metros and subways around the world.
For the last few years, I’ve been following an interesting and strongly Beck influenced map discovery slowly unfurl on social media. A hitherto little-known curiosity was a Beck-style diagram of Sydney’s suburban railways that was published in 1939.
But to first set some context, Sydney’s suburban railway network was, like most other cities of the era, depicted by geographical maps with rail lines and stations overlaid. Occasionally a simplified, non-geographic network diagram was developed, for pocket maps, stations, and/or carriage interiors.
An example of the latter is the 1928 Sydney Metropolitan railways and stations map:
This diagram was likely easier to read than a geographical map with the city’s many inlets. But it’s still appears chaotic, and definitely difficult to read.
A paradigm shift was to come just over a decade later:
Sydney Railway Map No. 1
The pocket Railway Map – Sydney Suburban and City Underground railway No.1, 1939, was commissioned and published by the Department of Railways, New South Wales. The consistent 45° line angles, uncluttered station spacing, vibrant line colours, weight of the lines, and even the typeface display fingerprints of Beck’s London Tube Map design principles. However, no designer or draftsperson is associated with its creation. And despite being labelled edition ‘No. 1’, it was long believed that there was no sequel.
Furthermore, in their International Cartographic Association (ICA) paper Beck Exportation: London and Sydney, William Cartwright and Kenneth Field explore “how this ‘Exportation’ of Beck’s design resulted in the 1939 Sydney metromap [sic] that was a clone of the London Underground map.”
Cameron Booth, a Sydney graphic designer, transit map designer, and operator of the TransitMap.net site, analysed this map in May 2012. He tried but was unable to determine whether this map was licensed from London Underground, or whether the Commissioner for Railways, New South Wales just took the initiative to create it itself. The similarities to the LU pocket maps of the time are striking – down to copying the pocket map cover layout, fonts, and the London Underground roundel:
More Archival Research
A decade late, BlueSky user @Crossing-Lights (Xing Lin) in 2023 found in the New South Wales Government Archives a listing for a Sydney Railway Layout. He asked for a copy and was stunned to see this:
The records of this pamphlet provided a frustratingly vague date of “pre-1962”.
The pamphlet cover was found separately, and it stood out due its similarity to the 1939 cover:
This confirmed that the map was indeed Sydney Railway Map No. 2, with a date!
By flipping and turning up the contrast on the scan, Lin then noticed the faint imprint of a network diagram on the reverse side:
He emailed the Archive staff to request a full scan of the back, which the Archives kindly provided, which is the full-colour map in all its glory:
Cameron Booth analyses the cartography of this map in his September 29, 2023 post on the series Transit Maps: Historical Map: Sydney Railway Layout, 1953. as well as the cartographic differences from No. 1. He further provides some thoughts as to its creation:
“…the general consensus has always been that this was a one-off attempt at something in the style of H.C. Beck’s newfangled London Underground diagram. I seem to recall that one theory even had it that the 1939 diagram was produced for visiting dignitaries from London Transport and was never even seen by the general public. Jay Foreman’s Unfinished London video on the history of the Tube Map (Part 2) even suggests that Beck himself drew it (to which I say, “Poppycock!”).”
Cameron featured his cleaned-up version of No. 2 here:
Differences in the Black & White and Colour 1953 No. 2 Map Versions
Comparing the black & white and colour 1953 No. 2 maps, and I notice some slight differences:
- The arrows from the additional station boxes to their respective lines are shorter in the B&W version, not touching the route lines. Whereas in the colour version they do touch the route lines, usually with a curve.
- The line widths appear to be a bit narrower in the blue East Hills branch, and the purple Bankstown line. Perhaps this is meant to indicate less service? But the width difference is quite subtle.
- The (Circular) Quay loop segment is a solid line in the B&W version. The solid Quay loop. This could also point towards that print of the map having been used by the Department of Railways and modified over time to keep up with the network’s changes. Whilst the colour version shows this dotted line.
- Coloured lines when photographed in black & white generally appear in shades of grey, however in the B&W version, all of the coloured lines are the same black and of consistent thickness throughout.
- The Colour version line weights are inconsistent across the whole map, which could be due to the map being hand-drafted — it’s particularly noticeable around Clyde, and between the Warwick Farm Racecourse and ANZAC Rifle Range branches (both of which had very low service frequencies).
- The B&W Reference Legend has also the same black for all lines, of consistent thickness; whereas the colour Reference Legend shows the City Underground and Homebush colour line examples have slightly different vertical alignments and length from the B&W examples.
So whilst the two maps are very similar, they are not identical.
Sydney Official Guide’s City & Suburban Electric Railway System Diagram 1960
Mike Ashworth, TfL’s (and previously London Transport’s) Design & Heritage Manager for 26 years, had seen the Sydney Official Guide’s City & Suburban Electric Railway System Diagram of 1960 during a visit to the Mitchell Library in Sydney. Being keen to acquire one, he had seen a few months later on Ebay, which he bid on but just missed winning. Miraculously, the vendor a few days later contacted him to say that the original purchaser had dropped out, and would he like it? The vendor also by chance lived in Theydon Bois, close to Ashworth who lived in Woodford (both London suburbs). It would have been even more serendipitous if both had lived in Epping, given that name appears on the map, albeit referring to the other side of the planet. The vendor related that a family member had picked it up in Sydney in 1939 and had brought the map with them whence they returned to the UK.
The diagram echoes the contemporary London Transport ‘diary’ version of the Tube map, although it does not use colours to delineate lines. The network has of course seen many closures and a few extensions since 1960, the one most noticeably ‘missing’ from this plan being the Eastern Suburbs Railway.
Mike determined that his map was drawn for the Guide by the Survey Branch of the City Engineers Department of the Council of the City of Sydney. He notes that it is of a style very similar to those issued by many postwar municipal authorities, ‘selling’ the city in terms of both residential and commercial opportunities, as well as a holiday destination. To wit, the Guide’s front cover has a panoramic view of Circular Quay in Sydney Cove, the central terminus of the city’s ferry services. This image shows the then relatively low-rise city centre before the widespread advent of skyscrapers:
But wait, there’s more!
The last apparent evolution of Sydney’s Beckian map lineage is the 1974 version seen below:
This map was not publicly released – Booth concluded that this map was most likely from an internal railway publication. As of this post’s publication, a copy of this rare map is still for sale.
Unofficial TfL-style Tube Map of Sydney’s 2025 suburban rail network
To (unofficially) square the roundel, Xing Lins created an unofficial map of Sydney’s Suburban Rail network as of 2025, which also includes the city’s light rail lines.
Epilogue
The last holdout of a major city metro map that wasn’t based on Beck’s transport map design principles, New York City, finally capitulated this year in a major Beckian redesign. This is testament to Beck’s dedicated experimentation and development of what has objectively been the best way of representing a transit system.
This post – a brief exploration of Beck’s heritage on the far side of the world – is an experiment in writing a shorter article. Do not be alarmed. Regular length posts will re-appeared soon.
Free Content Costs Money
We continue to be a free content site. However, we do have a Patreon for donations, which goes solely to paying for the not inconsiderable server costs – given how many reads and views the site gets annually.
LR Cartograpic Series
LR has long been interested in matters cartographic. This is another in an occasional series on network navigability, maps, wayfinding, and typefaces. Previous editions in this series are:
- London Overground’s aborted individual line names and colours
- London Overground’s approved line names and colours
- Thameslink deserves Tube Map respect
Typefaces, Fonts, and Wayfinding
- TfL’s Johnston Typeface Celebration
- TfL’s Johnston 100 font [In work]
- Public Transport Station Floor Wayfinding
- Toronto’s Subway Typeface and Wayfinding