A fun little GIF from Appealing Industries that shows the construction of the modern New York Subway in sequence. I’d really like it to be just a little slower, and have a year clock somewhere. Bonus points would have been awarded for showing the construction and eventual demolition of the elevated lines as well. Still nicely done, and almost mesmeric after a while.
Omitting the old elevated lines makes the map look pretty strange in early years with lots of isolated and disconnected segments. But given the distortions of the modern map it’s not really feasible to show them in the same format, they wouldn’t fit. Here’s an animated gif version of my geographically-accurate New York subway timeline map though:
While we’re at it, Boston, including the surface sections of lines using the Green Line tunnel:
