Mistakes in old maps

[jadmor]

I was browsing through one of the NLS collections showing lines around Cowdenbeath and Lumphinnans and noticed an interesting omission; the main line running north from Cowdenbeath New had a junction linking to the old line running towards Thornton Junction, built as part of the Forth Bridge connecting works, and this is omitted from the map, even though it shows revisions from 1895 onwards.
it is not the first time I have spotted an error( Jowett's hand drawn atlas gets the junctions at Germiston wrong) but it is the first time I have spotted an error in an Ordnance Survey map.

Can posters think of any other examples?

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

One example I can think of is Gunnislake station in Cornwall which is blatantly in the wrong place on the 1972 1 inch 7th series map. (This is before the 1994 move to its current location).

Gunnislake

More typically O.S. maps were not revised that often - or if they were it was only a selected revision - so you do get some glaring inconsistencies as the railway network developed. I quite like the Bartholomew half-inch maps which quite often show 'projected lines' that never actuallly happened. An example is the 1904 Sheffield sheet which shows the Midland Rly's projected line up the Spen Valley and Bradford 'Crossrail'.

Sheffield

 

[John Griffiths]

I wrote a piece in 2001 for 'Sheetlines', the journal of the Charles Close Society (a society for the study of Ordnance Survey mapping) about an anomaly on large scale maps of SE London. It is edition 60, pp33-34, available here:

Sheetlines Archive | The Charles Close Society

www.charlesclosesociety.org

 

[30907]

I was browsing through one of the NLS collections showing lines around Cowdenbeath and Lumphinnans and noticed an interesting omission; the main line running north from Cowdenbeath New had a junction linking to the old line running towards Thornton Junction, built as part of the Forth Bridge connecting works, and this is omitted from the map, even though it shows revisions from 1895 onwards.
it is not the first time I have spotted an error( Jowett's hand drawn atlas gets the junctions at Germiston wrong) but it is the first time I have spotted an error in an Ordnance Survey map.

The map itself is dated 1896 and "resurveyed 1894" - assuming the line you mention was in place by 1894, it is a surprisingly major error. Minor railway-related ones are not unknown.

 

[oldman]

According to RailScot, the new alignment from Cowdenbeath North J. to Lumphinnans Central J. did not open until 1900.