Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your London Underground Map shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the London Underground Map offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of London Underground Map at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a London Underground Map? Wrong! If the London Underground Map is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about London Underground Map then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling London Underground Map? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about London Underground Map and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your London Underground Map wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your London Underground Map then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the London Underground Map site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about London Underground Map, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your London Underground Map, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

The tube map is the schematic diagram representing the lines, stations, and zones of the London Underground, London's rapid transit system.As a schematic diagram it shows not the geographic but the relative positions of stations along the lines, stations' connective relations with each other and their fare zone locations. The basic design concepts, especially that of mapping topology rather than geographically, have been widely adopted for other network maps around the world.

History of the tube map would look if it showed the correct locations of the stations

Early maps Different underground lines were controlled by different companies and no official unified map was produced until 1906, when Charles Tyson Yerkes unified the railways and operated them under a combined "Underground" brand.

Early Underground maps were geographically correct, and also showed streets and other local features. 1908 Underground map The lines were not shown with a consistent colour scheme — for example, the Central Line was blue in 1908, yellow in 1926, 1926 Underground map and orange by 1932, 1932 Underground map by which time details such as streets had been removed.

The 1932 edition was the last geographically-based map to be published, before the now familiar style of map took its place. However Transport for London bus maps show closely the actual routes as coloured lines.

Beck's maps The first diagrammatic map of the Underground was designed by Harry Beck in 1933. 1933 map Beck was an Underground employee who realised that, because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another — only the topology of the railway mattered. This approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams; while these were not the inspiration for Beck's diagram, his colleagues pointed out the similarities and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical-circuit symbols and names with terminology, such as "bakelite" for "Bakerloo Line". In fact, Beck based his diagram on a similar mapping system for underground sewage systems.

To this end, he devised a vastly simplified map, consisting of stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or at 45 degrees. To make the map clearer and to emphasise connections, Beck differentiated between ordinary stations (marked with tick marks) and interchanges (marked with diamond (shape)s). The Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal — it was an uncommissioned spare-time project, and it tentatively introduced it to the public in a small pamphlet. It was immediately popular, and ever since the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network.

Despite the complexity of making the map Beck was paid just five Guinea (British coin) for the work. After its initial success, he continued to design the Underground map until 1960, a single (and unpopular) 1939 edition by Hans Scheger being the exception. 1939 Underground map During this time, as well as accommodating new lines and stations, Beck continually altered the design, for example changing interchange symbol from diamonds to circles, as well as altering the line colours - the Central Line from orange to red, and the Bakerloo Line from red to brown. Beck's final design, in 1960, bears a strong resemblance to modern-day maps. 1960 Underground map

After Beck Beck had by 1960 fallen out with the Underground's publicity officer, Harold Hutchinson. Hutchinson, though not a designer himself, drafted his own version of the Tube map in 1960; it removed the smoothed corners of Beck's design, lines were less straight and created some highly cramped areas (most notably, around Liverpool Street station). 1963 Underground map However, Hutchinson also introduced interchange symbols (circles for Underground-only, squares for interchanges with British Rail) that were black and allowed multiple lines through them, as opposed to Beck who used one circle for each line at an interchange, coloured according to the corresponding line.

In 1964, the design of the map was taken over by Paul Garbutt, who like Beck had produced a map in his spare time due to his dislike of the current design. Garbutt's map restored curves and bends to the diagram, but retained Hutchinson's black interchange circles (the squares however were replaced with circles with a dot inside). Garbutt continued to produce Underground maps for at least another 20 years — Tube maps stopped bearing the designer's name in 1986, by which time the elements of the map bore a very strong resemblance to today's map. 1986 Underground map

Today Alterations have been made to the map over the years. Recent designs have incorporated changes to the network, such as the Docklands Light Railway and the Jubilee Line Extension. In addition, since 2002 the London Underground ticketing#Fare zones have been added, to better help passengers judge the cost of a journey. Nevertheless the map remains true to Beck's original scheme, and many other transport systems use schematic maps to represent their services, undoubtedly inspired by Beck. A facsimile of Beck's original design is on display on the southbound platform at his local station, Finchley Central tube station. The map is currently maintained and updated by Alan Foale, of The LS Company.

Cultural references The design has become so widely known that it is now instantly recognisable as representing London. It has been featured on T-shirts, postcards, and other memorabilia. In 2006 the design came second in a televised search for the most well known British Design Icon.http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/the-tube-map It widely cited by academics and designers as a 'design classic'http://diagrams.org/fig-pages/f00022.htmlhttp://www.designmuseum.org/design/london-transporthttp://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A673517http://www.design-technology.info/designers/page35.htm and it is due to these cultural associations that London Underground does not usually permit the design to be used or altered for any other purpose. This has only been officially sanctioned on a few occasions:
for launch of a book on subway maps

Aspects of the London diagram (the line colours and styles, the station ticks or interchange symbols) are often used in advertising. The 'look' of the London Underground map (including 45 degree angles, evenly spaced 'stations', and some geographic distortion) has been emulated by many other subway systems.http://www.ursasoft.com/maps/index.htmhttp://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/referenceandlanguages/0,,1101403,00.html While London Underground have been protective of their copyright they have also allowed their concepts to be shared with other transport operators (Amsterdam's Gemeentelijk_Vervoerbedrijf even pays tribute to them on their maphttp://www.gvb.nl/english/travellers/maps/metromap.html) and indeed some other playful references have been permitted.

There are also many unofficial maps which have utilised the Beck style for their own purposes - road networkshttp://www.btinternet.com/~roads/map.pnghttp://www.motorwaymap.co.uk/pdf/Web%20v1%20custom%20614x460%20v13%20Dec%20update%20print%20only.pdf and waterwayshttp://www.systemed.net/carto/underground_map1024.jpghttp://www.systemed.net/carto/londonwaterways.gif appear popular, though others appear as purely comedichttp://www.craphound.com/themes/main/images/tubemap.jpg or for wordplay. Anagram Tube Map There are now even websites and software where diagrams can be computer generated using the 'rules' of the London Underground maphttp://i11www.iti.uni-karlsruhe.de/research/geonet/projects.php?project=MM&lang=en

Technical aspects The designers of the map have tackled a variety of problems in showing information as clearly as possible and have sometimes adopted different solutions.

Line colours The table below shows the changing use of colours since the first Beck map. The current colours are taken from the TfL Colour Standards guide,{{cite web | title =TfL Colour Standards | publisher =TfL | date =[2007-01-14 | url =http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/downloads/pdf/LULColourStandardsLinked.pdf | accessdate = 2007-01-14 --> which defines the precise colours and also a colour naming scheme which is particular to TfL. Earlier maps were limited by the number of colours available that could be clearly distinguished in print. Improvements in colour printing technology have reduced this problem and the map has coped with the identification of new lines without great difficulty.

{| class="wikitable"|-!Line!Current Colour
(TfL name)!History|-|Bakerloo Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Brown|-|Central Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Red|-|Circle Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Corporate Yellow|Originally part of the Metropolitan and District Lines, green (black outline) from 1948, yellow (black outline) 1951-1987|-|District Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Green|-|East London Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Underground Orange|Originally white (thick red outline), part of the Metropolitan Line (green, then purple) until 1970, white (thick purple outline) until 1990|-|Hammersmith & City Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Underground Pink|Part of the Metropolitan Line until 1990|-|Jubilee Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Grey|The northern end was part of the Bakerloo line until 1979|-|Metropolitan Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Magenta|In the 1930s and 1940s the District and Metropolitan Lines were shown combined, in green|-|Northern Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Black|-|Piccadilly Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Blue|-|Victoria Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Light Blue|-|Waterloo & City Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Corporate Turquoise|Part of British Rail until 1994, white (black outline)] (not shown on the standard map - see below)|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Trams Green
(beaded line)|-|Docklands Light Railway (expected from 2007)|style="background:white; color:black; text-align:center; border-style: double; border-width: 0px 0px 6px 0px; border-color: #;"|Orange
(double stripe)|Various components currently shown in Network Rail colours, East London Line colours or not at all.|-|[British Rail (selected lines only - see below)|style="background:white; color:black; text-align:center; border-style: double; border-width: 0px 0px 6px 0px; border-color: black;"|Black
(double stripe)|Orange from 1985, white (orange outline) 1987-1990|-|Northern City Line|style="text-align:center;"|Now a Network Rail line|Originally white (thick purple outline), black as part of the Northern Line, white (thick black outline) from 1970|}

Service information is indicated by the format:

Station marks An important symbol that Beck introduced was the 'tick' to indicate stations. This allowed stations to be placed closer together while retaining clarity, because the tick was only on the side of the line nearer the station name (ideally centrally placed, though the arrangement of lines did not always allow this).

From the start, interchange stations were given a special mark to indicate their importance, though its shape changed over the years. In addition, from 1960, marks were used to identify stations that offered convenient interchange with British Railways (now National Rail). The following shapes have been used:



Since 1970 the map has used the British Rail 'double arrow' beside the station name to indicate main-line interchanges. Where the main-line station has a different name from the Underground station that it connects with, since 1977 this has been shown in a box.

In recent years, some maps have marked stations offering step-free access suitable for wheelchair users with a blue circle containing a wheelchair symbol in white.

Some interchanges are more convenient than others and the map designers have repeatedly rearranged the layout of the map to try to indicate where the interchanges are more complex, such as by making the interchange circles more distant and linking them with thin black lines. Sometimes the need for simplicity overrides this goal; the Bakerloo/Northern Lines interchange at Charing Cross is not very convenient and passengers would be better off changing at Embankment, but the need to simplify the inner London area means that the map seems to indicate that Charing Cross is the easier interchange.

Lines or services The map aims to make the complicated network of services easy to understand, but there are occasions when it might be useful to have more information about the services that operate on each line.

The District Line is the classic example; it is shown as one line on the map, but comprises services on the main route between Upminster and Ealing/Richmond/Wimbledon; between Edgware Road and Wimbledon; and the High Street Kensington to Olympia shuttle service. For most of its history the map has not distinguished these services, which could be misleading to an unfamiliar user. Recent maps have tried to tackle this problem by separating the different routes at Earl's Court.

Limited-service routes have sometimes been identified with hatched lines (see above), with some complications added to the map to show where peak-only services ran through to branches, such as that to Chesham on the Metropolitan Line. The number of routes with a limited service has declined in recent years as patronage recovered from its early 1980s' low point. As there are now fewer restrictions to show, and remaining ones are now mainly indicated in the accompanying text rather than by special line markings.

Official variations on the tube map The tube map exists to help people navigate the Underground, and it has been questioned whether it should play a wider role in helping people navigate London itself. The question has been raised as to whether main-line railways should be shown on the map, in particular those in Inner London. The Underground has largely resisted adding additional services to the standard tube map, instead producing separate maps with different information:



The maps showing all the National Rail routes provide useful additional information at the expense of considerably increased complexity, as they contain almost 700 stations. This makes them harder to read, even when Paper sizes.

Non-Underground lines on the standard tube map Some non-Underground lines have appeared on the standard tube map:



Currently the only non-Underground lines shown are the Docklands Light Railway and the North London Line.

When Transport for London takes over Silverlink Metro services under the London Overground banner, they will be shown on the map in white with an orange outline. This will include the North London Line, the Watford DC Line to Watford Junction, the West London Line, the Gospel Oak-Barking line, and eventually the extended East London Line.

Further reading

References External links Official maps

Unofficial maps

History of the map

Other maps worldwide

The tube map is the schematic diagram representing the lines, stations, and zones of the London Underground, London's rapid transit system.As a schematic diagram it shows not the geographic but the relative positions of stations along the lines, stations' connective relations with each other and their fare zone locations. The basic design concepts, especially that of mapping topology rather than geographically, have been widely adopted for other network maps around the world.

History of the tube map would look if it showed the correct locations of the stations

Early maps Different underground lines were controlled by different companies and no official unified map was produced until 1906, when Charles Tyson Yerkes unified the railways and operated them under a combined "Underground" brand.

Early Underground maps were geographically correct, and also showed streets and other local features. 1908 Underground map The lines were not shown with a consistent colour scheme — for example, the Central Line was blue in 1908, yellow in 1926, 1926 Underground map and orange by 1932, 1932 Underground map by which time details such as streets had been removed.

The 1932 edition was the last geographically-based map to be published, before the now familiar style of map took its place. However Transport for London bus maps show closely the actual routes as coloured lines.

Beck's maps The first diagrammatic map of the Underground was designed by Harry Beck in 1933. 1933 map Beck was an Underground employee who realised that, because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another — only the topology of the railway mattered. This approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams; while these were not the inspiration for Beck's diagram, his colleagues pointed out the similarities and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical-circuit symbols and names with terminology, such as "bakelite" for "Bakerloo Line". In fact, Beck based his diagram on a similar mapping system for underground sewage systems.

To this end, he devised a vastly simplified map, consisting of stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or at 45 degrees. To make the map clearer and to emphasise connections, Beck differentiated between ordinary stations (marked with tick marks) and interchanges (marked with diamond (shape)s). The Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal — it was an uncommissioned spare-time project, and it tentatively introduced it to the public in a small pamphlet. It was immediately popular, and ever since the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network.

Despite the complexity of making the map Beck was paid just five Guinea (British coin) for the work. After its initial success, he continued to design the Underground map until 1960, a single (and unpopular) 1939 edition by Hans Scheger being the exception. 1939 Underground map During this time, as well as accommodating new lines and stations, Beck continually altered the design, for example changing interchange symbol from diamonds to circles, as well as altering the line colours - the Central Line from orange to red, and the Bakerloo Line from red to brown. Beck's final design, in 1960, bears a strong resemblance to modern-day maps. 1960 Underground map

After Beck Beck had by 1960 fallen out with the Underground's publicity officer, Harold Hutchinson. Hutchinson, though not a designer himself, drafted his own version of the Tube map in 1960; it removed the smoothed corners of Beck's design, lines were less straight and created some highly cramped areas (most notably, around Liverpool Street station). 1963 Underground map However, Hutchinson also introduced interchange symbols (circles for Underground-only, squares for interchanges with British Rail) that were black and allowed multiple lines through them, as opposed to Beck who used one circle for each line at an interchange, coloured according to the corresponding line.

In 1964, the design of the map was taken over by Paul Garbutt, who like Beck had produced a map in his spare time due to his dislike of the current design. Garbutt's map restored curves and bends to the diagram, but retained Hutchinson's black interchange circles (the squares however were replaced with circles with a dot inside). Garbutt continued to produce Underground maps for at least another 20 years — Tube maps stopped bearing the designer's name in 1986, by which time the elements of the map bore a very strong resemblance to today's map. 1986 Underground map

Today Alterations have been made to the map over the years. Recent designs have incorporated changes to the network, such as the Docklands Light Railway and the Jubilee Line Extension. In addition, since 2002 the London Underground ticketing#Fare zones have been added, to better help passengers judge the cost of a journey. Nevertheless the map remains true to Beck's original scheme, and many other transport systems use schematic maps to represent their services, undoubtedly inspired by Beck. A facsimile of Beck's original design is on display on the southbound platform at his local station, Finchley Central tube station. The map is currently maintained and updated by Alan Foale, of The LS Company.

Cultural references The design has become so widely known that it is now instantly recognisable as representing London. It has been featured on T-shirts, postcards, and other memorabilia. In 2006 the design came second in a televised search for the most well known British Design Icon.http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/the-tube-map It widely cited by academics and designers as a 'design classic'http://diagrams.org/fig-pages/f00022.htmlhttp://www.designmuseum.org/design/london-transporthttp://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A673517http://www.design-technology.info/designers/page35.htm and it is due to these cultural associations that London Underground does not usually permit the design to be used or altered for any other purpose. This has only been officially sanctioned on a few occasions:
for launch of a book on subway maps

Aspects of the London diagram (the line colours and styles, the station ticks or interchange symbols) are often used in advertising. The 'look' of the London Underground map (including 45 degree angles, evenly spaced 'stations', and some geographic distortion) has been emulated by many other subway systems.http://www.ursasoft.com/maps/index.htmhttp://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/referenceandlanguages/0,,1101403,00.html While London Underground have been protective of their copyright they have also allowed their concepts to be shared with other transport operators (Amsterdam's Gemeentelijk_Vervoerbedrijf even pays tribute to them on their maphttp://www.gvb.nl/english/travellers/maps/metromap.html) and indeed some other playful references have been permitted.

There are also many unofficial maps which have utilised the Beck style for their own purposes - road networkshttp://www.btinternet.com/~roads/map.pnghttp://www.motorwaymap.co.uk/pdf/Web%20v1%20custom%20614x460%20v13%20Dec%20update%20print%20only.pdf and waterwayshttp://www.systemed.net/carto/underground_map1024.jpghttp://www.systemed.net/carto/londonwaterways.gif appear popular, though others appear as purely comedichttp://www.craphound.com/themes/main/images/tubemap.jpg or for wordplay. Anagram Tube Map There are now even websites and software where diagrams can be computer generated using the 'rules' of the London Underground maphttp://i11www.iti.uni-karlsruhe.de/research/geonet/projects.php?project=MM&lang=en

Technical aspects The designers of the map have tackled a variety of problems in showing information as clearly as possible and have sometimes adopted different solutions.

Line colours The table below shows the changing use of colours since the first Beck map. The current colours are taken from the TfL Colour Standards guide,{{cite web | title =TfL Colour Standards | publisher =TfL | date =[2007-01-14 | url =http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/downloads/pdf/LULColourStandardsLinked.pdf | accessdate = 2007-01-14 --> which defines the precise colours and also a colour naming scheme which is particular to TfL. Earlier maps were limited by the number of colours available that could be clearly distinguished in print. Improvements in colour printing technology have reduced this problem and the map has coped with the identification of new lines without great difficulty.

{| class="wikitable"|-!Line!Current Colour
(TfL name)!History|-|Bakerloo Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Brown|-|Central Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Red|-|Circle Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Corporate Yellow|Originally part of the Metropolitan and District Lines, green (black outline) from 1948, yellow (black outline) 1951-1987|-|District Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Green|-|East London Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Underground Orange|Originally white (thick red outline), part of the Metropolitan Line (green, then purple) until 1970, white (thick purple outline) until 1990|-|Hammersmith & City Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Underground Pink|Part of the Metropolitan Line until 1990|-|Jubilee Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Grey|The northern end was part of the Bakerloo line until 1979|-|Metropolitan Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Magenta|In the 1930s and 1940s the District and Metropolitan Lines were shown combined, in green|-|Northern Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Black|-|Piccadilly Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Blue|-|Victoria Line|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Corporate Light Blue|-|Waterloo & City Line|style="background:#; color:black; text-align:center;"|Corporate Turquoise|Part of British Rail until 1994, white (black outline)] (not shown on the standard map - see below)|style="background:#; color:white; text-align:center;"|Trams Green
(beaded line)|-|Docklands Light Railway (expected from 2007)|style="background:white; color:black; text-align:center; border-style: double; border-width: 0px 0px 6px 0px; border-color: #;"|Orange
(double stripe)|Various components currently shown in Network Rail colours, East London Line colours or not at all.|-|[British Rail (selected lines only - see below)|style="background:white; color:black; text-align:center; border-style: double; border-width: 0px 0px 6px 0px; border-color: black;"|Black
(double stripe)|Orange from 1985, white (orange outline) 1987-1990|-|Northern City Line|style="text-align:center;"|Now a Network Rail line|Originally white (thick purple outline), black as part of the Northern Line, white (thick black outline) from 1970|}

Service information is indicated by the format:

Station marks An important symbol that Beck introduced was the 'tick' to indicate stations. This allowed stations to be placed closer together while retaining clarity, because the tick was only on the side of the line nearer the station name (ideally centrally placed, though the arrangement of lines did not always allow this).

From the start, interchange stations were given a special mark to indicate their importance, though its shape changed over the years. In addition, from 1960, marks were used to identify stations that offered convenient interchange with British Railways (now National Rail). The following shapes have been used:



Since 1970 the map has used the British Rail 'double arrow' beside the station name to indicate main-line interchanges. Where the main-line station has a different name from the Underground station that it connects with, since 1977 this has been shown in a box.

In recent years, some maps have marked stations offering step-free access suitable for wheelchair users with a blue circle containing a wheelchair symbol in white.

Some interchanges are more convenient than others and the map designers have repeatedly rearranged the layout of the map to try to indicate where the interchanges are more complex, such as by making the interchange circles more distant and linking them with thin black lines. Sometimes the need for simplicity overrides this goal; the Bakerloo/Northern Lines interchange at Charing Cross is not very convenient and passengers would be better off changing at Embankment, but the need to simplify the inner London area means that the map seems to indicate that Charing Cross is the easier interchange.

Lines or services The map aims to make the complicated network of services easy to understand, but there are occasions when it might be useful to have more information about the services that operate on each line.

The District Line is the classic example; it is shown as one line on the map, but comprises services on the main route between Upminster and Ealing/Richmond/Wimbledon; between Edgware Road and Wimbledon; and the High Street Kensington to Olympia shuttle service. For most of its history the map has not distinguished these services, which could be misleading to an unfamiliar user. Recent maps have tried to tackle this problem by separating the different routes at Earl's Court.

Limited-service routes have sometimes been identified with hatched lines (see above), with some complications added to the map to show where peak-only services ran through to branches, such as that to Chesham on the Metropolitan Line. The number of routes with a limited service has declined in recent years as patronage recovered from its early 1980s' low point. As there are now fewer restrictions to show, and remaining ones are now mainly indicated in the accompanying text rather than by special line markings.

Official variations on the tube map The tube map exists to help people navigate the Underground, and it has been questioned whether it should play a wider role in helping people navigate London itself. The question has been raised as to whether main-line railways should be shown on the map, in particular those in Inner London. The Underground has largely resisted adding additional services to the standard tube map, instead producing separate maps with different information:



The maps showing all the National Rail routes provide useful additional information at the expense of considerably increased complexity, as they contain almost 700 stations. This makes them harder to read, even when Paper sizes.

Non-Underground lines on the standard tube map Some non-Underground lines have appeared on the standard tube map:



Currently the only non-Underground lines shown are the Docklands Light Railway and the North London Line.

When Transport for London takes over Silverlink Metro services under the London Overground banner, they will be shown on the map in white with an orange outline. This will include the North London Line, the Watford DC Line to Watford Junction, the West London Line, the Gospel Oak-Barking line, and eventually the extended East London Line.

Further reading

References External links Official maps

Unofficial maps

History of the map

Other maps worldwide



 

London Underground Map



 
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