Vintage rapid transit maps

so what you are saying is that you don't have a larger version....correct?


Sorry to bother you.


Thanks for sharing anyways.

3rdrail wrote:Copy it, send it to your pictures, and blow it up with your computer software.

That might work with an actual photograph or negative, but this is a digital image. Blowing it up will just produce a pixelated mess because the data isn't there.

Having said that, I do have a full size version of that map, which can be downloaded here.

Thank You "MBTA3247" for the larger version of the map.


This is a great map.

If you have any other maps/track layouts/drawings, I would love to see them.


Thanks again.
Bill

sixflagscoasters wrote:Thank You "MBTA3247" for the larger version of the map.


This is a great map.

If you have any other maps/track layouts/drawings, I would love to see them.


Thanks again.
Bill

I have a large number of them, mostly of BERy/MTA/MBTA and Eastern Mass, courtesy of Leo Sullivan, who has taken on the task of scanning them in to preserve them. At some point I plan to put them all online, but I need to shrink the file sizes down first and find a decent place to host them.

3rdrail wrote:

Well, here's a surprise, thanks to Leo Sullivan. This is a 1945 Metropolitan Transit Recess Commission (early MTA ?) map of proposed extensions of the rapid transit system. The Boston Elevated Railway Company was still running the system and the Metropolitan Transit Authority was two and four years away from taking over, legally and operationally, respectively. This is truely an amazing document as it shows the insight and vision that saw that this expansion might be possible, which in fact, actually did come to fruition decades later in many cases.

I have cleaned up the file a little bit, maintained the physical size and resolution, but greatly reduced the file size.

http://flickr.com/photos/ottomatic77/3304445209/

If you want to email me your originals, I can properly size them for optimal viewing and download. Flickr is a great place to host, and you can attribute a Creative Commons license to allow people to legally share the files.

-otto-

You might all be interested to know that some of these maps are as large as 100 mb as tiffs.
The 'Airview' was only 7 mb and was copied as a JPEG to go to Paul (I think about 380 kb). Many of them are topographically correct, include streets etc. and don't take compression well. There are 58 files in the Boston Elevated System Map file. they range from
1865 to the end of the MTA. The original scans for file have to be large to equal or exceed the detail of the
printed maps which range from crude to excellent. Other stuff like yard or carhouse layouts can be really squeezed.
8X10 photos which scan in at about 3mb compress to 250 kb without much loss. Several of us, working together, have probably scanned about 100,000 negatives and, some prints, so far, horsecars to PCCs.
LS

Leo Sullivan wrote:You might all be interested to know that some of these maps are as large as 100 mb as tiffs.

Duly noted. If you think there are some unusual maps that would be worth sharing with RAILROAD.NET, I'd be willing to take a crack at them, if you care to send me a somewhat compressed JPG, I can straighten it all out when it gets to my end.

Several of us, working together, have probably scanned about 100,000 negatives and, some prints, so far, horsecars to PCCs.

Glad there's a campaign to digitize this stuff before it all fades away.

-otto-

Otto Vondrak wrote: Glad there's a campaign to digitize this stuff before it all fades away.

I second that very heartily. For us to lose sight of a time that wasn't all pre-fabricated construction and showed bold initiative would be a travesty.

I've uploaded a pair of 1865 maps showing the Metropolitan, Cambridge, Middlesex, Broadway, and Lynn & Boston street railways, along with 1892 and 1895 West End Street Railway maps. You can download the ZIP file here.

I've compressed most of the files by varying amounts to make it easier to post them online (while keeping the pixel count the same). At least to my eyes, though, they appear virtually identical to the original uncompressed images. I'll upload more maps in small batches every few days, so as to give the rest of you time to comment on them and whatnot.

Enjoy!

Note that, in the 1945 Proposed Extensions map, Park Street and Boylston Street have been combined into a single station.

When zooming in on the East Watertown Station, it looks like it was drawn as an Ashmont-style transfer station. Was the line from there up to envisioned as a trolley/light rail connection, with subway cars terminating at Watertown?

I wonder if the same thing was envisioned for the Reading extension - you can't see as clearly what they envisioned at Sullivan as you can at East Watertown.

Fred- Yes, I'm surprised that they originally made them as two stations to begin with. Boylston may have been an envisioned jumping off point for extensions never built (like Post Office Square) back in 1897. If you look at the 1945 map, the Tremont St. side of the Pleasant Street Portal is for the Commonwealth Ave. Line (which loops after Auburndale to connect with the Highland Branch).

Octr- Yes, I think that you are right. It appears that what the drawing represents at East Watertown is the end of what we now know as the Red Line and the beginning of a line to Arlington Heights. They wouldn't have known "Light Rail" from heavy snail back in 1945, but who knows whether or not they envisioned a streetcar or rapid route to Arlington ? (Too bad that they didn't draw those little cars on the line like they did on the later map.)

After breaking away from the Highland Branch connection, it suggests a further expansion westerly after the Auburndale Station, over and past the Charles, as well. (Guarantee you that the Middlesex and Boston Street Railway Company would have wanted a piece of that !)

An examination of the East Watertown station clearly shows that the Cambridge-Dorchester line ends there and the Arlington Heights line is completely separate. Also, the Arlington Heights terminals is a loop facility, whereas the proposed rapid transit lines end at terminals with tail tracks for changing ends.

RailBus63 wrote: Also, the Arlington Heights terminals is a loop facility, whereas the proposed rapid transit lines end at terminals with tail tracks for changing ends.

Good observation- that should tell us which is Surface and which is Rapid. 1945 was the debut year for Boston's single-ended PCC's. A "futuristic vision" would probably show a loop at a terminal.
Big yards at Dedham and Reading. I wonder where they were envisioned ?

When the 1945 plans were made, the local newspapers ran a series of articles describing each proposed extension. If anyone wants to do some digging, there may be microfilm versions (or perhaps even paper) available. Would the Transportation Library in Park Square have them?