Old maps - mainland Europe - useful resource found

[Neil]

One of the consistently more useful sites for working out how railways fitted into the UK landscape is Old Maps; even with the limited zoom feature available to non-subscribers it gives enough information to be able to plot track layout and building outlines. These days I'm just as interested in the railways of mainland Europe as I am in those of the UK so I set out to see if there was a comparable site covering the continent. Well if there is I cant find it but on a tangential search I came across this large scale map of the old Gent-Zuid station, so it looks as if there is mapping to a suitable scale for the modeller. Does anyone know of an on line continental equivalent of Old Maps where one might browse several locations?

Edited August 31, 2017 by Neil

[Joseph_Pestell]

Gordon Wiseman will know the full answer in relation to France. But I am fairly certain that there is a similar facility to old-maps on the IGN website.

[Enterprisingwestern]

No doubt there will be a full set of detailed European maps, at least for the 30's and 40's, in Germany somewhere?

 

Mike.

[PhilJ W]

Not sure if it will be of any use for your purposes but Allied maps from both world wars are available covering the battlefronts of WW1 and the D-day beaches (and hinterland) of WW2.

[Neil]

Thanks to a post on the Narrow Gauge Modelling online forum I've found a useful resource. Sporenplan Online have a database covering a number of European countries though coverage of the Netherlands appears to be the most comprehensive. To get started click on the small 'sporenplannen' in red at the top left, this brings up a map of Europe, click on the coloured countries to see what is available in each. Also available from the home page are historic plans from round the first quarter of the 20th century, just click on the link 'NIEUW: schaaltekeningen van het gehele Staatsspoorwegen-net van rond 1910. Zie hier' .

[tractionman]

National Library of Scotland (NLS) has free online maps of parts of France and Belgium, relating to WW1 and WW2:

 

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=5&lat=56.0000&lon=-4.0000&layers=101723168&b=1

 

Some of these maps are of a large scale, 1:5000, so useful for details of railway installations.

 

See

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/90725-wdlr-war-department-light-railways-on-wwi-trench-maps/

 

all the best,

 

Keith