Plan for the London Connecting Railway & Railway Transit along both banks of the Thames, with an open walk from Hungerford to the Tower, and from Vauxhall to Deptford, a Metropolitan Improvement Plan by John Martin, September 1845. Published by Hansard for the House of Commons, London. On paper size 75 by 56 cm. Covers an area from Wilsdon (Willesden), Hampstead and Islington across to Ilford and Barking in the north and from Roehampton, Wandsworth and Dulwich to Eltham in the south. Hand-coloured. The map was Martin’s response to the spread of railways in London and the pressure to link the railway termini at the expense of the city centre. He seems to have drawn a map that kept the centre intact and protect it from the kind of development that had seen railways thrust their way way into London. The map shows Martin’s solution: protect the city whilst linking the the lines of the different companies by a series of loops around the capital. A detailed map that shows the extent of London just before the Great Exhibtion, with the villages and hamlets outside the the centre still showing their separate identities. Both sides have been cropped just outside the margins and are now rebacked to give the map symmetry. Has been folded. VG condition.