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Historic railway maps

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snakeeyes

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Hi, does anyone know where to find free online historic maps about railways?

Cheers.
 
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SquireBev

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http://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php
This one shows pre-grouping lines overlaid on a modern map, and has options to modern lines, stations, and other features. It's usefully colour-coded so you can easily determine which lines were built/operated by which company. Edit: Beaten to it!

There's also the National Library of Scotland, which has an extensive collection of old OS maps covering pretty much the entire of the UK. They've recently completed coverage for the 25-mile-to-the-inch maps, which show railways in great detail. Here: http://maps.nls.uk/
 

duffield

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The New Adlestrop Railway Atlas is an excellent freely downloadable PDF showing current and historic railways. It doesn't cover the whole of the UK but it is a work in progress still being updated.
http://www.systemed.net/atlas/

Thanks due to Richard Fairhurst for his efforts in producing this. Really useful if you download a copy for when you have no internet connection.
 

SquireBev

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The New Adlestrop Railway Atlas is an excellent freely downloadable PDF showing current and historic railways. It doesn't cover the whole of the UK but it is a work in progress still being updated.
http://www.systemed.net/atlas/

Thanks due to Richard Fairhurst for his efforts in producing this. Really useful if you download a copy for when you have no internet connection.

It's been at least two years since the last update, as far as I know, so I'm not entirely sure that it is still being updated after all.

A shame, as it's a very useful resource.
 

SemaphoreSam

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Wow! Just saw the progress made, especially around Liverpool. It has been many more than 2 years; I had thought Mr. Fairhurst gave up on updating. There are some mistakes (I pointed out a few to the author years ago), but it is, without doubt, one of the best resources around, and I've been looking for 25 years or more. Wonderful to see the progress! Sam
 
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duffield

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Wow! Just saw the progress made, especially around Liverpool. It has been many more than 2 years; I had thought Mr. Fairhurst gave up on updating.

There was also 'stale' version hanging around which Mr. Fairhurst didn't realize still existed which now appears to have been deleted. That caused me some confusion but Mr. Fairhurst kindly pointed me to the updated version.
 

oversteer

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I am sure I saw a map where you could select the year range and it would show the railways in existence at that time
Does anyone know its address?
 

Requeststop

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Wow! Just saw the progress made, especially around Liverpool. It has been many more than 2 years; I had thought Mr. Fairhurst gave up on updating. There are some mistakes (I pointed out a few to the author years ago), but it is, without doubt, one of the best resources around, and I've been looking for 25 years or more. Wonderful to see the progress! Sam

I too am impressed at the new map. The previously updated map I saw in this series was back in 2009. I had given up any further work on this map. I am a fan of rail maps, and this is one project I'd love to see completed.
 

SemaphoreSam

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I too am impressed at the new map. The previously updated map I saw in this series was back in 2009. I had given up any further work on this map. I am a fan of rail maps, and this is one project I'd love to see completed.

The above is in reference to the updated New Adlestrop Map, by Mr. Fairhurst. The updated map is a great improvement; one caveat: the invaluable "Find" function, which I use extensively to pinpoint stations, is not functioning correctly; it does not bring the requested station to the center, sometimes not even close. If anyone is in contact with the author, could you ask him to fix this bothersome glitch? This function always worked faultlessly on the old map. Sam
 

Requeststop

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The above is in reference to the updated New Adlestrop Map, by Mr. Fairhurst. The updated map is a great improvement; one caveat: the invaluable "Find" function, which I use extensively to pinpoint stations, is not functioning correctly; it does not bring the requested station to the center, sometimes not even close. If anyone is in contact with the author, could you ask him to fix this bothersome glitch? This function always worked faultlessly on the old map. Sam

If you click on the link given above http://www.systemed.net/atlas/ at the bottom in blue is the name Richard Fairhurst. Click on the name and your computer should open your e-mail link so you can write to him. I just tried it out here and it works.
 

DelW

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I am sure I saw a map where you could select the year range and it would show the railways in existence at that time
Does anyone know its address?
I've often thought that would be very interesting, but if there is such a map, I haven't found it yet.

In the past I tended to assume that the lines which we still have were among the earliest built, and that the later-built lines were the first to go, but although that applies in many cases, it's far from being generally correct. Often when I have researched areas, lines have developed in quite a different order from that which I'd have expected. It would be fascinating to be able to see how the route map developed, especially in early days.
 

Requeststop

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Thanks for the alert of the up-date Doctor Fegg. I have downloaded the update and had a fun couple of hours studying the latest additions to the map and noticed the suggested amendment I suggested down there in Truro. My slight contribution to your excellent map. Please keep up the excellent work and let us know here, any further expansions you have made.

Cheers from the rail-less island.
 

Doctor Fegg

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Thanks for spotting that one - literally a slip of the mouse finger, I think!
 

duffield

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Just uploaded a nice big update to the New Adlestrop:

http://www.systemed.net/atlas/

As ever, thanks to everyone who's offered suggestions and corrections.

Richard F
Only just spotted this! Great update, good to have Leeds included now as I'm in that area quite a lot. Thanks again.

NB If you're viewing it with Firefox's built in PDF viewer it may come out very blurry at 100% zoom, this is clearly a bug in Firefox because it displays fine in the Adobe PDF viewer if you download it.
 

Joe Paxton

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NB If you're viewing it with Firefox's built in PDF viewer it may come out very blurry at 100% zoom, this is clearly a bug in Firefox because it displays fine in the Adobe PDF viewer if you download it.

I've found Firefox's in-browser PDF viewer fails to properly render a few things. Some years ago I used Foxit Reader instead of Adobe Reader as a standalone PDF viewer, but that too struggled to render some complex PDF documents - the advantage was it loaded quickly and used fewer system resources than the rather bloated Adobe Reader (the same reason integral browser PDF viewers are beneficial).
 
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