Highest Mountain Railways

In my last post, I highlighted a graphic showing highest mountain peaks and lowest ocean depths via Attila Bátorfy's Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities. His latest post has another interesting one on a similar subject. The graphics are from newspapers and magazine published in Hungary in the early 20th Century. This 1907 drawing shows the world’s highest mountain railways in a sideways view.

-from Kincses Kalendáriom - A gyakorlati élet általános útmutatója (Treasure Almanac - A General Guide of Practial Living)—published by Jenő Rákosi’s newspaper company from 1896 until 1946. Source of graphic and caption-Attila Bátorfy. 

Here is an approximate (via Google) translation from the Hungarian text:

“The world’s highest mountain railways.
The picturesque panorama, fresh air, and the majesty of towering crags and ice fields attract vast crowds of tourists—especially in summer—to the highest mountain regions. However, since ascending just one kilometer in altitude—even on a good path—requires as much exertion as walking eight kilometers on flat ground, and not everyone possesses the iron-strong legs, lungs, and heart required for mountaineering, engineers have sought to make even the great mountain peaks accessible to non-climbers by constructing mountain railways. Railways of ever-increasing steepness are being built one after another, and we are not far off from the day when even Mont Blanc...“ (the text likely continues on the next page).

As a bonus graphic continuing the railroad theme, here is a map from the same collection.

Dezső Gáspár: Hungary’s foreign trade. 1932

Hickmann's Highs and Lows

In a recent post on Attila Bátorfy's Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities, he highlighted the Czech-born geographer and statistician Anton Leo Hickmann and his early contributions to data visualization. Hickmann’s most influential work, the Geographisch-statistischer Universal-Taschen-Atlas, was published in 1894. You can view it from the Austrian National Library. it’s full of interesting charts and maps but what got my attention was this diagram.

I’ve posted before about comparative mountain heights. There’s even a post on the David Rumsey Map Collection showing many different examples of these but this one is new to me. Note that I stitched two atlas pages together to make the image above. The title translated from German is “Idealized view of the most significant highs and lows“.

This graphic has two layers, the top one for mountain heights sitting over a layer of sea and ocean depths. The top panel shows Europe in the foreground and from left to right Africa, Asia, South America New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii. Mount Saint Elias (straddling the U.S. and Canada) is the only North America peak shown*, Denali must have been unknown to Hickmann. Here’s a detail with the Balkans in front and Amerika (mostly south and central) in the background.

The second layer has the ocean depths with major seas layered on top of them, a clever way of showing many bodies of water in the same illustration.

A second grouping underneath mirrors the top ones with a focus on the Alps atop the Mediterranean Sea and its affiliated bodies of water. Here’s a detail from the third and fourth panels with the Mediterranean and Ligurian Seas on the bottom, Bern on the foreground and some of the high peaks of the Alps in the background.

*Not counting Hawaii as North America. Also Mt Hooker is a name that appears in many places but none of them are close to 4185 meters.

For a deep dive into the rest of Hickmann’s atlas see Atilla’s post.

Earth Mapped

mapped.earth is a wonderful interactive global visualization from Aaron Becker. 

Here is an example showing winds and ocean currents along the south coast of Africa.

From the site: “Earth is a live view of the planet’s current conditions: winds, ocean currents, sea temperatures, storms, and the aurora, rendered as an interactive 3D globe over real terrain. The data refreshes itself around the clock — global weather models four times a day, ocean analyses daily, the aurora forecast every hour. Nothing here is a stock animation; every moving ribbon is advected through today’s measured or modeled fields.”

You can watch the globe spin or spin it yourself to pan and zoom to amy area of interest. Here is a Sunday image of the storm that spent the entire weekend and well beyond bearing down on us on the east coast of the USA.

There are many layers you can add. NO₂ is strikingly drawn though it is perhaps just a proxy for population.

Here is the actual population with population spikes showing an inverted terrain - low Himalayas surrounded by high populations.

And a giant dust plume coming off the Sahara.

The best part is watching the wind animations. In this case colored by temperature.

Erin Brockovich’s AI Data Center Map

I recently saw an interview with consumer advocate Erin Brockovich. She put together an interactive data center map to keep track of the data center issues across the United States.

For the screen shot above I unchecked the “Community Reported” red dots as they overwhelm the map. Those are places submitted by concerned residents. From the site “The colored data center pins cover publicly announced, major AI-focused and hyperscale facilities — including projects that were cancelled, blocked or shelved. Each popup lists its source citations. Many smaller or unannounced facilities are not listed, and this is not a registry of every data center in the country. Know of one missing? Report it here.”

You can click a point for details, including the data sources as seen below.

One of the major issues with data centers is how much water they use so one of the options is the use the NOAA’s drought monitor maps as a background layer.

Here is the map with everything showing. The most recent status of data centers shows up at the top. There are more of them under construction than are currently operational.

The noise nearby residents will need to endure is shown in these impact rings.

If you are within a quarter mile the noise is compared to a vacuum cleaner, 0.25 to 0.75 miles a dishwasher, while anything within 1.5 miles is still very audible and possibly disruptive to light sleepers. These noise levels are a 24-hour/7 day reality for those that live nearby. Another map shows places where states and local governments are acting to create bans or cancel some of these projects.

The site contains much more information including news, FAQ’s, photos and statistics presented in an even handed manner. 

Another Day in Ukraine

I got this image off social media-I honestly can’t recall where it came from. It’s originally from Telegram and supposedly* shows just one day of attacks on Ukraine-September 12th, 2026.

*I use the term supposedly because I have no way to verify this map.

Here is one from September 15th via Telegram. 

Translation via Google - “Throughout the day, approximately 150 attack and jet-powered UAVs of various types were deployed to attack the Kyiv, Odesa, Cherkasy, and Kirovohrad regions. In the Kyiv region, warehouses and gas stations were targeted.“

I found an almost identical image to the first one on Dima Lazarchuk’s LinkedIn page with the following words:

“On weekends, some people wake up to birds singing outside their windows, some to the sound of the sea, and some to the rustling of autumn leaves.

In Ukraine, we wake up to the sound of russian drones flying in to kill us, and to the sound of our air defense trying to stop them.

Another weekend survived in Ukraine.

Another reminder to the world that russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is still ongoing.”

The Growth of Los Angeles County

 I don’t know who to give credit for this as there does not appear to be an “About” page, but here is a web site where you can watch a video of the growth of Los Angeles County since 1880.

The full video includes a small amount of text describing the county’s growth. The page allows you to pick from several specific areas, pan and zoom around or enter an address. Remember Pasadena in 1982? Here is part of it.

Here is the entire county in 2026.

You can color code the buildings by decade or by height, though since they are also shown in 3D the height option seems a bit redundant.

Hovering over any block will get you some stats.

Here is a video where you can see the downtown area growing upwards over a few decades.

Guide to Running While Female in Phoenix

Described as a “an absurd guide to the regular wish-it-wasn’t-so paranoia of running as a woman in the city“, the Guide to Running While Female in Central Phoenix shows what to look out for along running routes in central Phoenix.

This map is produced by Steady Hand Maps. Jen Urso is an accidental cartographer, more of an artist who was asked to make a map. She has since made many very attractive hand drawn maps including the one above. The legend is simple, three symbols for where you can safely run in a sports bra (it gets extremely hot there), where you will get cat calls and places you should only run in the daytime.

Here is a zoomed in area. It gives some detail for those of us who don’t have to think about this stuff when going out in public.

Urso in her blog post begins with this quote; “I thought it was a funny and obvious map of my experience as a woman runner. The thing that shocked me the most was how shocking it ended up being…to men.“ She concludes with “My map, in its absurdity, points out that this is not and should not be normal or acceptable. We want to go outside, alone, and feel strong and capable. We just want to run.“

If you want to dig deeper, you can listen to her interview on the Phoenix NPR station or watch one on FOX-10.

For more maps by Jen Urso, you can browse through her map showcase here. Here is an example she did for a dance studio in St. Louis.