Yorkshire Stations map - v3

[YorksLad12]

Hello,

I did some work on the Yorkshire Stations map from a few years back; someone had seen it last year and asked to use bits of it, it was easier to do the chunks as they wanted and recolour to their corporate colour scheme. Changing the colours allowed me to see some of the drawing errors better as well.

Then I revisited it in January and decided to make the text slightly larger and to highlight the heritage lines. Then I added a few information boxes, then I forgot to stop and ended up labelling every section of line. All those labels meant some substational redraws in places. Then I decided to colour them in, matching up with the RCH diagrams where feasible... Ironically, many of the colours are official Crayola colours

Clearly, the attached isn't finished as it doesn't have the main panel on the right, or the title box, and the lines aren't all stacked correctly. Plus, knowing how long it'll take me to do the other side of the map I've pre-emptively opened White Rose and closed Cottingley. The 'other side' will include a list of all the stations, the grid quare they are in, their first and last dates, how the various companies came together and anything else I can fit it. Not that I'm short of space, it's still B0 size...

But I thought I'd share this as I've reached a natural break point; restacking the lines will be next up, probably at the end of the month or start of May. As ever I value your comments.

 

[unslet]

That's a great effort. Well done.

 

[zwk500]

Fantastic effort.

My only comment would be that the distinction between line thicknesses isn't easy, especially between Closed and Heritage/freight only. I realise this would be a major change to the design but I would consider putting closed lines in dashes or some other broken pattern, so that only two thicknesses are used - this would be much easier to interpret straight away.
If this was discussed last time, then apologies.

 

[YorksLad12]

Fantastic effort.

My only comment would be that the distinction between line thicknesses isn't easy, especially between Closed and Heritage/freight only. I realise this would be a major change to the design but I would consider putting closed lines in dashes or some other broken pattern, so that only two thicknesses are used - this would be much easier to interpret straight away.
If this was discussed last time, then apologies.

You're right. The previous version had thick blue (open), thin blue (freight and diversions), thin grey (closed). That's fine for two colours but when you've got however many it is now it doesn't work. Thick is now slightly thicker than it was - but I agree that's it's not easy to tell them apart at times. I'm toying with making the thick lines one nudge thicker, and doing the same with the medium thickness, so that there's more separation between the three sorts.

Basically: I've over-complicated it.

 

[Bevan Price]

One minor point. The Rishworth branch joined the main line a short distance East of Sowerby Bridge station, not West, as shown on our fine map.

 

[eastwestdivide]

Echoing the thickness thing, the SY Joint line through Maltby *appears* to be the ’closed’ thickness, but it’s still open for freight.

 

[YorksLad12]

One minor point. The Rishworth branch joined the main line a short distance East of Sowerby Bridge station, not West, as shown on our fine map.

Well that's a bally nuisance, as I'm sure you can guess when you look at the space available!

Echoing the thickness thing, the SY Joint line through Maltby *appears* to be the ’closed’ thickness, but it’s still open for freight.

Author error; that is in the closed thickness (thinness), it should be the medium thickness.

 

[eastwestdivide]

Author error; that is in the closed thickness (thinness), it should be the medium thickness.

Aha - thanks. It was hard to tell in isolation. A bit like when people do colour coding with far too many colours, and it can be hard to tell one shade from the next.

 

[YorksLad12]

Aha - thanks. It was hard to tell in isolation. A bit like when people do colour coding with far too many colours, and it can be hard to tell one shade from the next.

I readily admit it is now an accessibility nightmare. But still better than the current Tube Map

I'll keep finessing it. Changing line thicknesses means having to check every junction so that they curve properly rather than come in at an odd angle. But if a job's worth doing...

(As I write that; I could try doing the 'mediums' as white, with a coloured outline - Overground stylee.)

 

[eastwestdivide]

What software? Has it got anything like definable line styles/patterns? Stable door/horse scenario?

 

[YorksLad12]

It's Inkscape. It does have some predefined patterns; that's how I did the joint lines (way easier than the tutorials suggested; just duplicate your line and tun one into a dashed version and give it a different colour. New skill learned). Overground-style would be something simar; a full-thickness line with a medium-thickness white line duplicated on top.

Skipton-Rylstone might be awkward. But I'll have a play, see what happens.

 

[eastwestdivide]

I was wondering more if there were object style sheets, like ‘graphic styles’ in Illustrator or ‘object styles’ in InDesign.
Where you define a style, e.g. ‘closed line, LMS’ as ‘3point, maroon’, and apply the style to all relevant sections of line. Then if you decide 3 point is too narrow, you just change the style definition and all the objects with that style automatically change according to the new definition.

a quick google suggests limited support for that in Inkscape, but there appears to be a menu option ‘Edit > Select Same’ which might help with bulk changes.

 

[zwk500]

I was wondering more if there were object style sheets, like ‘graphic styles’ in Illustrator or ‘object styles’ in InDesign.
Where you define a style, e.g. ‘closed line, LMS’ as ‘3point, maroon’, and apply the style to all relevant sections of line. Then if you decide 3 point is too narrow, you just change the style definition and all the objects with that style automatically change according to the new definition.

a quick google suggests limited support for that in Inkscape, but there appears to be a menu option ‘Edit > Select Same’ which might help with bulk changes.

I personally would be using layers for something like this in Inkscape, although that requires a lot of forward planning when you build the map.

 

[YorksLad12]

I personally would be using layers for something like this in Inkscape, although that requires a lot of forward planning when you build the map.

Oh, there are plenty layers in this map!

Originally, lines were grouped open passenger->open non-passenger->closed. Then I split them into layers by pre-Grouping owner (so I could bulk change the colours). Now I'm going to recombine them so I can get them stacked correctly where they join. There are also layers for the info boxes, the line labels, open station symbols, closed station symbols, open station labels, closed station labels, the key, the background... admittedly, I was several hundred stations in before I realised I should be doing more of that, but that was back in 2020

 

[ainsworth74]

Excellent work and a fascinating map!

You have however missed a small branch around my patch. The Normanby branch of the Cleveland Railway which initial ran from a jetty on the Tees over the Eston hills for Guisborough. On your map it would come off between Cargo Fleet station and the Eston branch running parallel to the line through Nunthorpe. There's a nice period map on Wiki which shows the situation here.

 

[YorksLad12]

Excellent work and a fascinating map!

You have however missed a small branch around my patch. The Normanby branch of the Cleveland Railway which initial ran from a jetty on the Tees over the Eston hills for Guisborough. On your map it would come off between Cargo Fleet station and the Eston branch running parallel to the line through Nunthorpe. There's a nice period map on Wiki which shows the situation here.

Thank you - can't wait to see the printed version I've been promised by someone

The Normanby Branch is a non-passenger line, I thought (or rather, Wikipedia thinks)? When the NER bought out the Cleveland they closed the bit north of Guisborough, and linked the rest with the existing line via Nunthorpe. Or is there *another* line I've forgotten? It's always possible, I even found one large omission myself at Cawood!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Apr 2023 ==

Okay. Have fixed the Sowerby Bridge issue, and made the "open to non-regular passenger services" lines a bit more obvious. How does this look? Have re-layered everything back into open/closed from the by-company layers, so the junctions should be mostly correct now as well.