Conapega Is An Abysmal Metro System
Conapega was the fantasy metro network I came up with during my time at my secondary school, Dame Alice Owen’s. It cannot really be classified as a true metro map, rather, it ended up as an assortment of separate line diagrams. The network was heavily based on the London Underground, naturally – my obsession from childhood.
It was terrible. Here’s why:-
Unoriginal Line Names
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Seven of the lines are copied from the London Underground.
Most of the lines on the Conapega system are plagiarised straight from the London Underground. In the city, there’s a Bakerloo, Central, District, Jubilee, Metropolitan, Northern and a Piccadilly line. The City and Waterloo lines also reference existing London lines. The only reason there was no Circle line was the fact there was no circular line in Conapega. I chose not to use the Victoria line name as there were no Victorias in our year.
There’s barely anything in the Conapega maps that have a resemblance of an original identity; right down to the line names and font/design idioms used on the maps themselves. For the most part, the colours for the lines are almost the same as the tube’s colour assignments!
Each London Underground line’s name has materialised from their histories. Frankly, the only reason the Bakerloo line was named as such on the Conapega map, was the fact I shoehorned a ‘Bakerloo’ station at the end of the line – there are no stations on the line named Baker Street or Waterloo. Bakerloo station is a station way out in the outskirts, serving a suburb – right at the end of the line – not significant enough for an entire line to be named after it.
For the brand new Napega map, all the lines have been named differently. Almost all of the lines are named after some of my closest friends throughout each era of my time at Dame Alice Owen’s.
Two lines in the original Conapega maps were named after fellow Owenians – the Gabriel Glider and Heaselang lines. I’ve preserved both for the re-designed map. Gabriel and Nick (a fellow Frenchman) were close friends at different times in my school life.
Insanely Complex Metro Lines
This is a Northern Line, via South Stephen, Pearce Bridge and West Brompton, terminating at Philippou Road.
Some of the lines on the Conapega map are wholly unrealistic.
The most egregious example is the Northern Line. Surpassing’s London counterpart in considerable extent, the line is so intensely branched that it would be an absolute nightmare to operate. There would be a lot of junctions, which would need to be multi-tracked to be able to provide some semblance of a reasonably frequent metro service to each branch.
London’s Northern Line is confusing enough, but just imagine waiting for a train at Gabriel’s Beach, which is one of the busier stations on the network. With all the branches, the next train could be a train to Jacquestone via Kouloumas Square, Pearce Bridge and Wilym Street. Imagine fitting that into an information describer.
Such a line may have worked for a National Rail line with less frequent services – but not a proper metro service. There is not a single metro line like the Conapega Northern line in the world, and for good reason. Consider that the Northern line was to be Conapega’s busiest line.
The Piccadilly Line was not very well thought out either. The line splits into three branches at King’s Cross! Imagine the complexity of that junction. As with all fantasy cities I have created metro maps for, I have a vague idea of the structure of the city. This line split is not in the suburbs; instead branched right in busy central Conapega, with all three branches serving stations in the central zone of the city. Even with a 36 train-per-hour service, using the most advanced signalling systems, you’d only get 12 trains on each branch (inevitably split equally); it is doubtful that such a junction would be able to handle 36 trains passing per hour.
The concept of reverse branching is as follows:- the trunk service is the section of line with the most frequent service – almost always through the centre of the city. Normally, lines will branch off in the outer regions, each branch with lower frequencies. Lines branching in the busy central areas of the city is known as reverse branching – reducing the frequency in the centre is not a good idea. None of the London Underground lines are reverse branched – the Northern Line essentially is two different lines with complex connections at Camden Town and Kennington to increase service options (but a fun fact about the Northern Line – it is the only line on the tube where the frequency of the central sections are lower than the most frequent service outside of the centre in the peaks).
Indeed, the St. Jacques Map has been guilty of this – where Lines 10, 11, 15 and 18 branch in Zone 1. To patch this mistake, I added triangle junctions to these lines so that the frequency could be preserved throughout the branches. Zafarnia was conceived after years of experience in scheduling the London Underground – so there is no reverse branching.
Conapega’s exceptionally complex lines are guilty as charged of this metro planning crime – the aforementioned Piccadilly Line is the most egregious example – but this can be seen on the Bakerloo, Central, Metropolitan, Northern and Waterloo lines as well.
The Jacques A, B and C lines were only conceived when I digitised the paper line diagrams – previously, they would all be part of one whole Jacques line. This line, never hand-drawn, was essentially just a cheap way to add interchanges to certain stations to ‘beef them up’. All of the Jacques lines would have met at Gabriel Glider (the only station on the line to connect to all lines) – which would have deemed it an exceptionally egregious example of a reverse branched line, unless there were at least six platforms and lots of flying junctions at Gabriel Glider for the Jacques line!
The Gabriel Glider line was initially envisaged as the Napega counterpart to London’s Victoria line, but it can’t really decide whether it wants to run an express service, providing a faster alternative to slower lines, or stop at almost every single station in the vicinity, such as the main example where it serves almost every station on the Kouloumas Square branch of the Northern line. Of the 22 stations on the Gabriel Glider line, 16 are interchanges with the Northern line, rendering it rather redundant. To get from South Stephen to Gabriel’s Beach, it’s 20 stops on the Gabriel Glider, and 22 stops on the Northern Line.
The inconsistent number of stops between two stations on different lines is noteworthy. For example, between Gabriel Glider and King’s Cross stations, each line has a different number of intermediate stops: Bakerloo (1), Central (8), City (2), District (11), Gabriel Glider (3), Jacques A (13), Jacques B (6), Jubilee (4), Metropolitan (3), Northern (7), Piccadilly (4), Waterloo (2). The so-called Gabriel Glider was to be the express line, and yet, three other lines provide a quicker journey between the two stations. Avoid the Jacques A like the plague.
The Beach and DLR lines are separate services – each being light railways. The Beach line is quite fleshed out and seems to be the true express service in Conapega, running from Jacquestone to Philippou (Road/of Coral) in 27 stations instead of the Northern’s 43. However the DLR clearly seems to be nothing more than an assortment of haphazardly placed interchange stations shoehorned into a line.
The line diagrams for Conapega imply an Overground network, but this was never fleshed out fully; again, stations were haphazardly selected to form the network, without any rhyme or reason. There is one station on the map with an interchange to Tramlink, which was never drawn, in paper or on pen – this would surely have been inspired by the tram network in Geneva. Lastly, there is a substantial number of stations with National Rail interchanges (more rail lines, great)! Comparatively, there are far fewer National Rail interchanges in St. Jacques – though admittedly this is because St. Jacques has fully developed Overground and Crossrail networks.
So Many Names
It’s not just the names of the lines, but the station names themselves.
There are 745 Underground stations in Conapega (this number includes DLR and Beach Line stations). More than enough for my entire year group, supposedly.
However, 490 of those stations are either existing railway stations in London and the UK, or completely random fantasy names, having nothing to do with anyone at school. 110 stations are names of TfL/National Rail stations (including disused stations).
That leaves just 255 stations named after people. When only 34% of your map honours your peers, it’s just not an effective map for its planned intent.
I have compiled a list of 239 students who were in my year group, including everyone who left before Year 13. The yearbook we created at the end of Year 13 was a great help to collate the names of many of the students in my year group, I’ve tried my best to remember all who had attended but left beforehand. I may have missed some people out – if people still care, I will surely add them to the new map, I’m a stickler for completeness.
255 stations… 239 people, everyone received a station, right? Not the case. Some people managed to get two, three, even more stations; the maximum number of station somebody received was 8 – Stephen was the lucky person with such a privilege. Stephen Central, West Stephen, East Stephen, South Stephen, Stephen Road, Stephen End, Stephen Marketside and Stephen’s Plage.
62 people in the year didn’t even get a single station. There was room for all the ridiculous fantastical names, and copies of London stations, but nothing for these people. Not to worry – in Napega no one is left out, and in the unlikely case that I’ve missed someone out, they will be added (though I doubt very much that anyone would care at this point, it has been 12 years since I left school).
No Love For Teachers
Mrs. Gillingham, I got you covered in the redesign.
Listen, it’s uncool when you’re at school to be fans of the teachers (well at least before A-Levels, where smaller classes meant we had slightly closer relationships with some of our teachers). However, as you get older, you appreciate them a lot more, especially the memorable characters. I wouldn’t appreciate some of my favourite subjects as well without great teachers like Mr. Morley, Dr. Davies and the legendary Mr. Archer (when are you going to learn this stuff?). Even of those who may have been strict, such as Mrs. Kremer, I couldn’t have gotten an A in Spanish GCSE without her help.
May the great Dr. Davison rest in piece. We may have been upset when Dr. Davison did everything he could to keep the school open in times of snow, but he was a great headteacher. We had the privilege of having him take over maths lessons every Friday.
At 31 years old, right now I have numerous friends who also happen to be teachers or used to work in teaching. It’s a very difficult job!
I’ve made a list of teachers who I liked most, as well as more memorable members of staff, to which I have all given stations.
Cat Airport
City planning was not my forte back in the day. Conapega was served by one airport – Cat Airport. Clearly, it was an afterthought. To reach Cat Airport, you would need to use the Northern line from Pearce Bridge (it wasn’t decided whether it was a connected branch on the line, or a mere shuttle service). Pearce Bridge is one of the most important stations, slap-bang in the city centre, mind. The airport appears to be in a secluded location relative to the city – and there are no other rail options provided. It simply doesn’t make any sense. It sort of mirrors how difficult it is to get to airports using the Subway in NYC – but at least Conapega has a metro line to Cat Airport.
