An Awesome 19th-Century Visualization of a Railroad Network

This 19th-century visualization of the New York and Erie Railroad is spectacular. Visually, it accentuates a possible core–periphery structure. (One expects railroad networks to have such a structure, although visualizations on their own can be very misleading, so one would need to check this to be sure.)

(Tip of the cap to Edward Tufte.)

Update: Here is an embedded version of the tweet so that you can see the picture without clicking on the link above.

160-year old geo/network hierarchical organizational diagram of the New York and Erie Railroad. pic.twitter.com/B3rvAXsbxx

— Elijah Meeks (@Elijah_Meeks) May 14, 2016