# Making a railway-lover's print with the Transit and Rails Map preset > a city told through its rail and transit lines 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. ## What you need - **UV printing:** flatbed UV printer, white [acrylic](https://yxecreations.com/pages/acrylic-sheets), 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](https://yxecreations.com/collections/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](/map-designer?preset=transit-rails-map). 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](https://yxecreations.com/products/4-pack-anodized-standoff-spacers); none for mugs, obviously. No cleanup needed - there are no tiny polygons in this palette. ## UV & Sublimation Printing ### UV printing 1. Export the 4096 px PNG. 2. Size in the RIP; UV's tonal fidelity is why this is the top method - the faded grid prints exactly as faint as designed. 3. White substrate, direct print; clear acrylic gets a white underbase. 4. Print, then optionally hit just the red rails with a gloss varnish pass so they sit proud of the matte grid. ### Sublimation 1. Darken the street grays first (see Step 2) unless you want a near-pure red-on-white result. 2. Print **mirrored** at final size on sublimation paper. 3. 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. 4. 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. ## Laser Cutting & Engraving ### Laser engraving The faded grid won't survive grayscale conversion - in a raster engrave the streets read as barely-there and the result is effectively rails + water. Lean into that: 1. Export the per-layer SVG ZIP. Option A (rails-only): engrave just `roadsRailway` and `water` on light ply - a clean burned network diagram. Option B: darken the street tiers to `#9A9A96` before export so the grid engraves as a faint mid-gray under darker rails. 2. Engrave water at low power, streets (if kept) at low-mid, rails at high for tonal separation. 3. Cut the outer rectangle last. 4. Two-tone red-core acrylic flips the trick: engrave everything except the rails so red shows through where the laser didn't touch - fiddly but striking. ## 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. --- Open the tool: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/transit-rails-map Read online: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/transit-rails-map