On Tue, 10 Jul 2007, MIG wrote:

On Jul 10, 10:52 am, Tom Anderson wrote:

All that stuff about maps got me thinking. It should be possible to colour
in the lines on the London Connections map to show which termini trains
run to. Since i'm a dab hand with the Gimp, i thought i'd give it a go
myself. Here's the first draft, which so far only has the Paddington lines
done:

http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/tmp/Lon...(Coloured).png

This is actually based on the zones map, which doesn't attempt to
diagram the routes, it simply shows which stations the zones are in and
some rather bizarre routes between them (like the weird branch to Hither
Green between Lewisham and Blackheath).

True, but that's more or less what the tube map does too, so i'm not
overly bothered.

There is a London Connections map which would be a more useful starting
point and includes the zones as well.

Is there? Distinct from this map? Do you mean the NR one? If not, what?

The diagram that's been given out with the National Rail timetable for
years always had a kind of attempt at colouring routes according to
terminus,

This one:

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/system...onnections.pdf

?

I note that has the same treatment of Hither Green.

but the trouble is that it can result in having to have
parallel lines along certain routes,

Yes, this is inevitable, as with the LU network - you get just this all
around the Circle, out beyond Rayner's Lane, out to Barking, etc, but
nobody seems to have trouble with it. It's a bit worse on NR, but not
colossally so. If you look at the NR map above, no route is more than
three lines wide, except at London Bridge where it's arguably gratuitous.

or else sillinesses like having a colour for Charing Cross/Cannon Street
and then saying that the route from Dartford to Victoria is really
covered by Charing Cross services that go to Victoria, rather than have
two colours along the Bexleyheath line.

This is bad, wrong, and i will not be doing it.

In the end, the grouping of services by TOC (or former BR division) is
more likely to correspond to some kind of operational reality without
creating incredible complication.

No, colouring by terminus is fine, as i will soon demonstrate!

tom

--
3.141592666666 and then it's just all sixes for the other 298 digits. Then
after that there's just hieroglyphs of scary eyes.