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This Tube Map Arranges Stations By Shared Words... And It's Pretty Ingenious

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How would the tube map look if it was arranged by words that the stations share? Alastair Carr decided to find out.

Welcome to a London where Bethnal Green, Bounds Green, Golders Green and Kensal Green are neighbours.

Where Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus have their own dedicated 'Waterloo & City-style' line.

Where London Bridge, Putney Bridge and Upminster Bridge are but a brief jaunt from one another.

And where the three Wimbledons are FINALLY united. Awww.

The map isn't just organised by name association, however. Alastair tells Londonist, "I tried to colour the lines with some logic, although there are a couple of idiosyncrasies."

Dark blue and light blue are directions (e.g. "north", "central" and "high")

Yellow and brown are natural features (e.g. "park", "oak", "common)

Black and grey are man-made features (e.g. "town", "terminal", "manor") — of these, black tends to be roads/streets/bridges

Green is "green"

Purple, red, pink and turquoise are town names (e.g. "Clapham", "Acton") - all the turquoise lines have only two stations, in a nod to the W&C line having only two stations

Says Alastair, "I had no idea what colour to use for the ampersand, so I just thought "well, ampersands are kind of quaint, and the Bakerloo line is quaint, so I'll do that line in brown as well.

"In general I tried to avoid lines of the same colour appearing too close together."

A couple of further points:

Double-lines are used for when stations share two words

"Edgware Road" gets two stations, like on the real tube map

Alastair tried, as far as possible, to arrange the stations alphabetically along each line

All images © Alastair Carr. Follow Alastair's blog here.