The Weird Case of Weirdcase

This may well end up being one of the oddest and perhaps most anal-retentive blog posts I've ever written, but it's an anomaly I noticed early in life and have never been able to find a satisfactory answer for. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly it involves the London Underground tube map.

As I've discussed elsewhere the iconic tube map captured my imagination at an early age and it was at this early age that the anomaly itself was in full swing. 

It was all to do with the way the stations were labelled.

Up until the end of H C Beck's reign as tube map designer the station names on the map were all written in uppercase. Presumably all the better to read you with – although not if you have dyslexia. Unfortunately at that time accessibility wasn't high on the list of London Transport's priorities, as can be seen from the fact no stations had step free access – despite the fact that so many of them had been originally been built with lifts.

Nevertheless, the all uppercase paradigm worked and was consistent even though it did give the impression that the map was SHOUTING at you.

As has been documented in many places elsewhere, in 1960 Harold Hutchinson at London Transport dispensed with Mr Beck's services and decided to redesign the tube map himself. After all he (probably) reasoned how hard could it be?

Probably harder than he'd thought at least to come up with a simple and aesthetically pleasing design.

Hutchinson's map is all sharp corners and jagged lines. The kind of thing that makes your eyes wince just to look at it. Given the mental health and safety hazard of its design it's easy to overlook that it's here that Weirdcase has been introduced. Some stations are SHOUTING STREET and other just Talking Reasonably Road.

Hutchinson's map must have been unpopular because it was soon replaced by one designed by Paul E Garbutt which removed some of Hutchinson's more egregious errors and returned more to the spirit of the H C Beck design. 

One element of Hutchinson's map he did retain was Weirdcase, so surely there's some kind of rationale behind this right?

Let's see.

The most obvious element that is always true is that End Of The Line stations are always uppercase. Or are they? Edgware Road is an End Of The Line for a District Line branch and it's in title case. Ditto Shoreditch on the Metropolitan Line.

Unfortunately none of the other potential criteria for upgrading a station to uppercase hold water either.

Interchange stations seem to be in uppercase except where they're not. Oxford Circus gets the honour, but oddly South Kensington doesn't, despite having more lines passing through it.

Kennington and Camden Town both get uppercase status even though the only thing the Northern Line is interchanging with at these stations is itself.

Stratford (no lines other than the Central pass through it at this point in history) gets the uppercase treatment merely by virtue of being an interchange with British Rail. However, Balham and South Ruislip (for example) are in title case despite also being interchange stations with British Rail only.

Bank and Monument despite being effectively the same station have the former in uppercase and the latter in title case.

You get the distinct impression that there's a point being made here about some stations being more important than others. Who was making these decisions?

It wasn't just the main map that had the station names in Weirdcase. The in carriage maps were often just as baffling during this period. Not only did they proudly sport Weirdcase but they played fast and loose with which interchanges they decide to show you, a practice which continues to this day. On the Piccadilly Line, Gloucester Road and South Kensington stations are identical from an interchange point of view and yet they try to pretend Gloucester Road is a lonely station:

Weirdcase however didn't last forever. In 1973 they switched the map back to to all uppercase before switching again to all title case in 1985 and staying that way.

Why was Weirdcase? I guess we'll never know.