Thursday, March 22, 2012

3D Tube Maps & 3D Cutaway Tube Station Diagrams

Londoners' fascination with London Underground & the design of the Tube map continues. I'm sure that BBC2's The Tube documentary will help to make that fascination with what goes on beneath our streets even stronger. Matt Brown from The Londonist has recently been experimenting with Google Sketchup to see what a 3D Tube Map would look like. He said "it's a confusing tangle. As a navigational aid, it fails". However, my favourites are those lovely 3D cutaway diagrams of London Underground:

Piccadilly Circus cutaway view by magpie-moon

I originally blogged about these cutaway diagrams a number of years back but Matt's post prompted me to re-visit them. The one above of Piccadilly Circus is by Gavin Dunn from 1989 and you can buy a reproduction from London Transport Museum's poster collection

Here's the more achitectural one the lovely image above was based on.  It's from a book written & illustrated by Laurence Menear called London's Underground Stations - A Social and Architectural Study and it features a number of cutaway diagrams including the one below of Piccadilly Circus

Diagram of Piccadilly Circus - from London's Underground Stations

There's a lovely 3D cutaway illustration of Bank and Monument stations found via skyscrapercity


Here's one of Liverpool Street from Crossrail's website


If anyone knows where there are more 3D Tube station cutaway designs please let me know in the comments. Have you seen any other 3D Tube maps that would work & help us get around the London Underground?

Update
Thanks to everyone who has added more images in the comments. Many thanks to Ivan who found one  I particularly like. It's an amazing one of Camden Town Underground by the cutaway artist Leslie Ashwell Wood.


It was the first of two illustrations he did of the station that appeared in The Eagle (© Dan Dare Corporation) in 1950 - more on this from Bear Alley's excellent blog post.

Ivan also found a mirrored site by Paul Mison of collection of many more 3D Cutaway drawings of London Underground station that was formerly on Geocities (remember them!).



There are some lovely illustrations in there too including the one above an official poster with a prediction of what the "new" Bond Street Tube station would look like after its completion in 1976. So check the link.

You might also like
Piccadilly Circus Tube Cutaway Diagrams
3D Tube Map
Photos & Review of Christian Wolmar Talk - "How the Tube Created London" 

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