Download map overlays
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It's difficult to produce a map showing enough detail for the Ringways. Luckily, we no longer need to - Google Earth provides all the background information. From this page you can download an overlay for Google Earth that will place the lines of the Ringways exactly where they belong on the high-resolution satellite photography of Greater London.
If you don't already have Google Earth, you can obtain it for free from earth.google.com. It works with Windows, Mac and Linux and requires a high speed internet connection.
How to use the Overlay
You will need a working version of Google Earth installed on your computer.
Download the file above and double-click it to open it with Google Earth. You will see a new item in the 'Places' box to the left of the screen, called Ringways.kmz, and the program will zoom to an overview of the London area, showing the Ringway lines.
You can zoom and scroll around the map as normal; the Ringway lines will show at all altitudes.
You can customise your view of the routes: click the plus or arrowhead symbol next to 'Ringways.kmz' in the Places box to expand the listing. You can then tick or untick each section to choose which ones you can see. They are split into five main categories:
- Known routes (blue) - the lines that have been established beyond doubt.
- Alternative lines (semi-transparent blue) - known alternatives to the routes in blue.
- Best guesses (grey) - where no information is available yet, the gaps have been bridged with an educated guess.
- Other proposals (green) - routes established and known but which did not survive long enough to be in the final Ringway plan.
- Post-Ringway bodges (red) - routes built after the cancellation of the Ringways and not on the line of a Ringway route.
You can continue expanding each of these sections to turn on or off sections of the plan or individual lines. If you wish to identify a specific line you can double-click it to re-centre the view on it.
If you want to keep the Ringway lines to view again, drag the Ringways.kmz from 'Temporary Places' to 'My Places'. It will then be available every time you load Google Earth.
