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Wellington to Johnsonville Souvenir Time-Table, New Zealand Railways

Contributed by Blythwood on Sep 30th, 2016. Artwork published in
July 1938
.
Wellington to Johnsonville Souvenir Time-Table, New Zealand Railways 1
Source: www.flickr.com Archives New Zealand. License: CC BY-SA.

New Zealand Railways timetable created by the New Zealand Railways studio to mark the arrival of electrified trains on the Johnsonville route. The electric trains introduced, shown on the picture, in fact remained in service until 2012!

The main font in the timetable is some kind of Cheltenham, presumably Monotype’s Gloucester. It has a four-terminal W, which some styles of Cheltenham had too, although not in the bold weight (see “Wellington” for this). The Garamond uses text figures, although surprisingly not superscripts, for the dates.

I don’t think Edward Tufte would like the superfluous box around “Wellington–Ngaio–Khandallah–Johnsonville”, and (if, as here, we’re not showing the times when a train stops at each station together on the same line) I think he might also suggest reducing the departure times to a stem and leaf.

Considering design of the front: it’s very 1930s British Empire: classical and regal, if a little dull, with a classical Garamond font, a crest and a lot of white space.

Wellington to Johnsonville Souvenir Time-Table, New Zealand Railways 2
Source: www.flickr.com Archives New Zealand. License: CC BY-SA.

Typefaces

  • Gill Sans
  • Monotype Garamond
  • Gloucester

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