Anagram Maps

Sometime last year, I was inspired by the London Underground anagram map to make a few of some of my region's transit network.

Here's the first of that series: The Long Island Rail Road. I used the official fare zone map as a base.



Next came anagram maps for New Jersey Transit and Metro-North. There were a few bugs and other things that made me take them back into the shop to re-work them.

I also did one of the Washington Metro.



Now, if you've ever seen the official WMATA map, you'll notice immediately that the style on my map is completely different from theirs. Also, notice that some stations (like "Neon Quorum Servant" [Mount Vernon Square]), I've taken a few liberties.

1. Generally speaking, anagrams on this map are based on WMATA maps published in the early 1990's. Since this time, it seems that WMATA has been tacking on ancillary points of interest to the official station names. Take a look at the name of the station two stops up from Neon Quorum Servant. ("Zero Date Courts"). This is derived from the string, "U Street-Cardozo." The latest map labels it, "U Street/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo." Too many letters!

2. Street names are fully spelled out.

3. University abbreviations in station names are omitted, unless the abbreviation is ridiculously obvious.

It wasn't long before I discovered someone else had done a different version of the same system, modifying the official map. Cords Loosing. I guess because the station names are so short, or there are very few anagrams for certain stations, both anagram maps have the same name on both maps.

Franconia-Springfield	Frangipani-Cornfields Mine omits the hyphen
Crystal City	Catty Lyrics
Pentagon City	Giant Potency
Smithsonian	This Mansion
L'Enfant Plaza	Fatal Zen Plan
Morgan Boulevard	Vanguard Bloomer
Takoma	Oak Mat
Landover	Old Raven

Enjoy! More soon.