RANDOM // LONDON UNDERGROUND

Although I don't live in London or use the tube too often I still found the 'guide to alternative london tube maps' pretty interesting. 

The tube system once began as a collection of independent underground railway companies that constructed lines in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These companies published route maps of their own services but did not, generally, co-operate in advertising their services collectively. The first combined map was published in 1908 by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London.

(click to enlarge)

The first diagrammatic map of the Underground was designed by Harry Beck in 1931. 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. 

He devised a simplified map, consisting of stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or on 45 degree diagonals. The Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal, it was an non-commissioned, spare-time project, and it was tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933. It immediately became popular, and the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network ever since. Beck was paid just five guineas for the work and after its initial success, he continued to design the Underground map until 1960.

Hundreds of quality alternative maps have now been created such as the one below;

(click to enlarge)