Making a railway-lover's print with the Transit and Rails Map preset

Difficulty: easy. Time: 30–45 minutes per printed piece. Best methods, in order: UV printing, sublimation on mugs and panels (with one contrast tweak), laser engraving (rails-only variant). A 3D plaque is possible but the faded grays are the design's soul and they don't translate well to filament - skip it unless you simplify hard.

This preset puts the railways first: every rail line in bold signal red over a deliberately faded gray street grid, soft blue water underneath. It reads like a network diagram drawn over a ghost of the city - made for train lovers, commuters, and model-rail people, on mugs, posters, and panels.

Open the Transit Rails Map preset

What You'll Need

UV printing: flatbed UV printer, white acrylic, aluminum composite, or light wood panels
Sublimation: sublimation printer + paper, white poly mugs (with mug press or wrap + convection oven), white poly-coated panels, heat tape, butcher paper
Laser engraving: diode or CO2 laser, light laser-grade plywood, or red-on-white two-tone acrylic for a cheeky rails-only version

Step 1 - Start from the preset

Open the Transit Rails Map preset. It loads London at zoom 12.6 - wide enough to catch the rail lines converging on the terminus stations from every direction, which is the whole composition: red lines radiating through a pale grid. Search any rail-heavy city (London, Paris, Berlin, Osaka, Zurich, Chicago) and center on the spot where lines converge - a main station, a junction, a river crossing. Keep zoom in the 12–13 band; closer and you lose the radiating-network effect, wider and the faded streets turn to fog.

Step 2 - Tune the layers

One Solid layer group, Rails over streets:

land - #F4F4F2 paper white.
water - #A9CCE3 soft blue; the Thames anchors the London composition, keep your river in frame.
landusePark - #DEE8DA pale green whisper.
The faded grid: roadsMotorway #D9D9D6 width 3, roadsPrimary #D9D9D6 width 2, roadsSecondary #E3E3E0 width 1. These are intentionally one step above the background.
roadsRailway - #E63946 width 4, the entire point of the preset.

The one tweak that matters: those street grays sit only ~7–10% darker than the land. UV printing holds them fine, but sublimation will wash them close to invisible - if you're pressing a mug or panel and want the ghost grid to survive, darken the streets to around #C9C9C4/#D4D4D0 before exporting. The red rails at width 4 are bulletproof in every method.

Step 3 - Export

UV / sublimation: 4096 px PNG, background ON (the paper-white land is part of the print; on a white blank you can toggle Background off to save ink - the blank plays the paper).
Laser: per-layer SVG ZIP so the rails can be engraved separately from the grid.
For mugs, export at the 1-1 aspect and let your mug template crop, or compose wider before export.
Mounting holes: Corner holes for a panel on anodized standoff spacers; none for mugs, obviously. No cleanup needed - there are no tiny polygons in this palette.

Choose Your Build Method

UV printing

Export the 4096 px PNG.
Size in the RIP; UV's tonal fidelity is why this is the top method - the faded grid prints exactly as faint as designed.
White substrate, direct print; clear acrylic gets a white underbase.
Print, then optionally hit just the red rails with a gloss varnish pass so they sit proud of the matte grid.

Sublimation

Darken the street grays first (see Step 2) unless you want a near-pure red-on-white result.
Print mirrored at final size on sublimation paper.
For a mug: tape the print around the white poly mug and press in a mug press with the settings recommended for your blank and inks (or wrap and oven per your usual process). For a panel: tape flat, add butcher paper, and flat press with your recommended settings.
Peel hot. The #E63946 rails transfer rich and saturated; check the ghost grid survived to your taste and adjust the hexes for the next run.

Make It Yours

Cities where rails are the story: Chicago's L radiating from the Loop, Berlin's Ringbahn circle, Osaka's loop line, Zurich's hauptbahnhof throat.
Underground swap: land #1C1C1E, streets #3A3A3C, rails #FFD329 - night-tube vibes for UV on black acrylic with Background off.
Heritage swap: rails #264653 and land #F1E9DA for a vintage timetable look that also engraves much better.
Honor a specific line: add a route layer over your actual commute in a second color (#2A9D8F) so "your train" stands out from the network.
Frame a single famous junction at zoom 14 - Clapham Junction or Zoo Interlocking - for the deep-cut rail nerd.
Circle export + Hanger hole = a rail-network ornament for the model-train tree.
Press a mug-and-coaster pair: same artwork, mug wrap crop plus circle crop.
Pair with the Airport Diagram preset of the same city - planes and trains, matching panels.