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Which year is this map from?

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MDarr

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I have this underground map on my wall that was actually in a station and used for real once.
Just wondering if anyone knows what year it might be from?
Theres only one Heathrow (central) , no DLR...
Numbers at the bottom say: 783/05598/2M(1640) No 30R Designed by Paul E Garbutt
Not many other clues other than the travel zones
Thanks for the help
 

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Ianno87

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The Bakerloo line terminating at Stonebridge Park dates it from 24 September 1982 to 4 June 1984
 

rg177

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Considering that the Bakerloo Line is shown as only going as far as Stonebridge Park, I'm sure that puts it as between 1982 and 1984.

Edit- pipped to the post!
 

PeterC

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Then in conjunction with the other info the 783 might well be July 1983
I think that that is the meaning. Checking the bus maps given away by London Transport from the 60s in my collection it looks as if this was a standard convention across London Transport.
 

MDarr

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Thanks all.
I'm actually from the UK (grew up in Amersham at the end of the Metropolitan) but now live in the USA
I have NO idea how this map got over here but I've enjoyed having it on my wall for years now. Thanks for the info!
 

telstarbox

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And from the London Transport Museum:

Paul E Garbutt responded to criticism of an unpopular, angular style of Underground map by drawing a new version, restoring the map's elegant curves, to relieve intellectual boredom at home during the Christmas break in 1962. He can therefore be said to be one of the few people who have altered the course of the Thames - and the Circle Line.

 

BrianW

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I'm sure you'll get a lot more informative responses than mine here indeed you already have.
There are significant 'issues' that afficionados will look for, including of course those you note like Heathrow and DLR
A few that come to mind for me-
- The extent of the Bakerloo line as noted by rg177- it has 'finished' at Queens Pk, Harrow&Wealdstone, Watford Jct, whether it's BR ...
- How Chesham's 'connected'; similraly (?) Kensington (Olympia); Shoreditch ...
- Piccadilly Line Rayners Lane to Uxbridge, or not
- Epping - Ongar
- Victoria and Jubilee lines
- Aldwych
I guess by now there must be hundreds of variants- wondering if someone has them all- best keep it quiet ... must be worth a lot.

I bought a couple of lovely books at the LT Museum in Covent Gdn- must be on website- eg 'Mr Beck's Underground Map- a history by Ken Garland'.
Suggest to family a pressie for you??

And finally- noting the wear at that point on the map- wondering if it had 'seen the light' at Fairlop?
 

MDarr

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And finally- noting the wear at that point on the map- wondering if it had 'seen the light' at Fairlop?

The whole map is in terrible shape its true but I have always loved it. The kids stuck things to it with tape, spilled coffee, was used as a jigsaw base...you name it lol
I still treasure it.
Being stuck at home and binge-watching Geoff Marshall videos has renewed my interest in finding out the year.

Having grown up in Amersham and I went to school in Chesham, I dont think I remember there ever NOT being a line from Chalfont and Latimer to there. I used it when I missed the bus to school!
That would have been about 82 onwards
 
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MikeWh

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The point about Chesham is whether the line is shown as a branch separate to the main line, or joined onto it as it is now.
 

Busaholic

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Sorry, only just come to this thread, but can confirm absolutely that 783 refers to July 1983 as the publication date for the map. Can't tell you when this convention started, but it was certainly in being by the denationalisation of London Transport in January 1970, just at the time I became a 55 Broadway employee, and continues to this day as far as I know, though I've not obtained any new TfL maps in the last three years or so. Printed maps, other than the Undergound one, are of course now anathema to the powers-that-be, a very retrograde attitude imo.
 

bluegoblin7

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This hasn't appeared since October 2010 (and since at least 2004 has had a . separating the date and year), with the month and year now being spelled out (alongside an homage to Beck's original 1931 design and a 'Correct at time of going to print' warning). The additional text first appeared on the December 2009 map, with the MM.YY notation.
 

AlbertBeale

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Sorry, only just come to this thread, but can confirm absolutely that 783 refers to July 1983 as the publication date for the map. Can't tell you when this convention started, but it was certainly in being by the denationalisation of London Transport in January 1970, just at the time I became a 55 Broadway employee, and continues to this day as far as I know, though I've not obtained any new TfL maps in the last three years or so. Printed maps, other than the Undergound one, are of course now anathema to the powers-that-be, a very retrograde attitude imo.

What's the rationale for publishing the printed tube map but not the bus maps? The latter are a more complicated system and hence a printed map is even more [than with the tube map] important for unfamiliar users / visitors / etc. I'm not saying don't print tube maps (which obviously should exist), but pointing out the lack of logic in not printing bus maps too.
 

rogercov

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What's the rationale for publishing the printed tube map but not the bus maps? The latter are a more complicated system and hence a printed map is even more [than with the tube map] important for unfamiliar users / visitors / etc. I'm not saying don't print tube maps (which obviously should exist), but pointing out the lack of logic in not printing bus maps too.
The bus maps used to be published, both on paper and as PDF files on the TfL website. There were 5 maps (Central, SE, SW,NE,NW). This stopped in March 2016, probably due to the complexity and cost of production. I was told in 2016 that the March 2016 set would be the very last one, so I went and got a few as souvenirs.
As far as I can see, the only way of planning a route around London by bus now (if you want to plan it yourself rather than with the Journey Planner) is by joining together the "Spider Maps" for various places. The interactive maps are also helpful, but in my opinion nothing beats having a real map and I'm a bit sad that they are no longer available. TfL seem to think that a journey planner is all the average tourist or member of the public needs these days :(
(sorry if I'm getting off-topic for this forum)
 

Mojo

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As far as I can see, the only way of planning a route around London by bus now (if you want to plan it yourself rather than with the Journey Planner) is by joining together the "Spider Maps" for various places.
Unfortunately most of the Spider Maps don't appear on the TfL website anymore.
 

Mojo

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Yes, that is the link to the Spider map pages, but as I said, most of them are not on there any more! It seems that many of the maps that include more recent route modifications are no longer published on their website.
 

AlbertBeale

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Totally agree. They haven't published bus timetables for years either!

And if you try to look up a route timetable on their website, they'll only give you information about an individual stop. The proper timetable, from which you can deduce everything from the one grid - times at each place, frequencies, etc etc - seems unavailable. It would be easier for them just to publish just one thing, rather than a plethora of individual bits of information which are impossible to piece together. There's no way of understanding the pattern of a service at a glance without having the proper timetable sheet; and there's nothing that can be gleaned from their bit-by-bit supply of information that can't also be got from the full timetable sheet.

So why? Do they not want anyone to find information to help them use a bus except for a known-in-advance pre-defined simple individual point-to-point journey? [This applies to the lack of maps as well as the lack of proper timetables.] Do they think that no-one can read a proper timetable? (Do they think we're all stupid?)

Why this tendency these days for organisations to insist on second-guessing what they think you want to know, and only answering a question after you've refined it and refined it, rather than giving you the information to make your own choice from? Is it because modern technology gives them that option, and they insist on doing so and hence dumbing us down in the process? Sorry for the rant - but the way that TfL have taken away timetables and maps is all of a piece with the way that various organisations treat the public nowadays.
 

sjoh

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Why this tendency these days for organisations to insist on second-guessing what they think you want to know, and only answering a question after you've refined it and refined it, rather than giving you the information to make your own choice from? Is it because modern technology gives them that option, and they insist on doing so and hence dumbing us down in the process?

In short, yes.
I used to work for the Government Digital Service at the Cabinet Office.
Modern thinking in terms of service provision to customers is the idea of of "filter demand based upon need" - or as we used to call it "kick them off when it's irrelevant to them".
Essentially, and you'll see this in a lot of digital services offered by government, the idea is to only show you what you need to know. This is helpful sometimes, as it reduces confusion, reduces server load, reduces load on services where the answer is going to be "no" anyway, and it's supposed to reduce cost.
However, a lot of that comes at the expense of customers' (taxpayers') time, as they end up essentially going through a questionnaire to work out if they should be using a particular service, before having to answer the same questions again in order to actually use it. If you've had to claim UC, or apply for a new passport or drivers license online in the past few years you'll probably have noticed this.
Whilst this was a centralised service design idea, many other government orgs - such as TfL - seem to have adopted a similar digital service ethos.
It does in fact work for the majority of cases. At the end of the day, most people only want to find out about the bits that are relevant to them - whether that's the options of a journey on public transport, or what benefits they're eligible to claim. It does mean however that what we used to call "edge cases" are fairly badly catered for. By "edge case", I mean a situation where the demand on the service is atypical to its normal use. So, the idea of someone who's interested in maps or history, or just wants to do their own transport planning manually without an algorithm doing it for them, is a good example of this.
It's got its pros and cons, but I can see how in this instance it's frustrating.
 

AlbertBeale

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In short, yes.
I used to work for the Government Digital Service at the Cabinet Office.
Modern thinking in terms of service provision to customers is the idea of of "filter demand based upon need" - or as we used to call it "kick them off when it's irrelevant to them".
Essentially, and you'll see this in a lot of digital services offered by government, the idea is to only show you what you need to know. This is helpful sometimes, as it reduces confusion, reduces server load, reduces load on services where the answer is going to be "no" anyway, and it's supposed to reduce cost.
However, a lot of that comes at the expense of customers' (taxpayers') time, as they end up essentially going through a questionnaire to work out if they should be using a particular service, before having to answer the same questions again in order to actually use it. If you've had to claim UC, or apply for a new passport or drivers license online in the past few years you'll probably have noticed this.
Whilst this was a centralised service design idea, many other government orgs - such as TfL - seem to have adopted a similar digital service ethos.
It does in fact work for the majority of cases. At the end of the day, most people only want to find out about the bits that are relevant to them - whether that's the options of a journey on public transport, or what benefits they're eligible to claim. It does mean however that what we used to call "edge cases" are fairly badly catered for. By "edge case", I mean a situation where the demand on the service is atypical to its normal use. So, the idea of someone who's interested in maps or history, or just wants to do their own transport planning manually without an algorithm doing it for them, is a good example of this.
It's got its pros and cons, but I can see how in this instance it's frustrating.

Hi - thanks for confirming my worst fears ... it's deliberate!

I'm not sure it's only "edge cases" losing out. I don't know anyone planning any not-done-regularly bus travel in London who isn't frustrated by the lack of maps.
 

Ianno87

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Hi - thanks for confirming my worst fears ... it's deliberate!

I'm not sure it's only "edge cases" losing out. I don't know anyone planning any not-done-regularly bus travel in London who isn't frustrated by the lack of maps.

Reality is that the vast majority of folk just whack up the journey planner on their phone to figure it out.
 

telstarbox

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Exactly this. For the places nearest to home/work I already know which bus routes to use. For a more exotic journey it takes less than a minute to put it into Google Maps which will show you the stop numbers as well as their position on the map:

Screenshot_20200903-154719.png
Screenshot_20200903-154729.png
 

Surreytraveller

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Trouble is, Google isn't going to show you routes in relation to each other, and how they interact, and looking at a map is going to give you useful alternatives which an algorithm isn't going to do
 

Ianno87

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Trouble is, Google isn't going to show you routes in relation to each other, and how they interact, and looking at a map is going to give you useful alternatives which an algorithm isn't going to do

Actually, Google is very good at picking out several alternative routes. And links to live info so it's based on what is actually coming.
 
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