this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Is that US one real?
At best it’s inaccurate. I see several missing lines that I know exist because I lived near them.
Old map, perhaps?
More likely a new map, and the lines you're thinking of have been shut down since the last time you checked.
(Or you're thinking of train tracks in general, not specifically ones carrying passenger service, which is what this is a map of.)
It's also missing every single rail line north of Copenhagen. The map is apparently a simplification on both continents.
Not that old. Between when Katrina wiped out the New Orleans-Jacksonville route in 2005 and when they partially restored the route in 2025. The only missing line I see is the Atlantic City line, which was out of service for about a week after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and about 8 months for signal modernization work in 2018-2019, so it is probably an accurate map of the available services in late 2018. It's worth noting that most of the lines on the map have one train per day per direction or fewer also, so if anything this map undersells the difference between US rail service and European rail service
Virginia, by any chance? I’m pretty there are state routes not on this Amtrak map
Or commuter rail? It’s hard to tell but I don’t see anything I recognize as commuter or metro rail. This looks like Amtrak intercity only.
All three state supported VA rail routes are on this map, along with the Cardinal, the Crescent, and the I-95 Amtrak routes. The S-Line isn't, but it also doesn't exist yet. Same with the Commonwealth Corridor. VRE shares tracks with Amtrak, so it is there, but does not have any visible effect on this map.
I think it's only Amtrak, the main Intercity passenger rail service. There's a ton more freight rail, and hundreds of smaller regional rail services.
It's not just Amtrak, you can see Metra, LIRR, Metro North, and MBTA routes on the map around their respective cities. And I'm not convinced there are hundreds of regional rail services in America, maybe if you count heritage railroads, but even then I think you won't be getting too far above 100 and those don't actually take people from point A to point B generally, so it's arguable that they count as passenger rail service
Looks pretty similar to that amtrak map shown on Wikipedia
It’s worse than that, because it doesn’t show service level. The northeast corridor (Boston—>nyc—>dc) have great train frequency (even then they need to run more trains on holidays).
I believe the long distance routes are like one train per day. You’d have to be really dedicated or really desperate to deal with such slow unreliable trains which such low frequency. I do believe they’re there only to preserve track and collect votes rather than be useful. At this rate maybe in another century ….
For now yes, but the one from Oklahoma city to Fort Worth TX will be ending in 90 days.
The trains anywhere in the US except the Northeast are far too slow, infrequent, and unreliable to plan around. Delays frequently are measured in 10s of hours on Amtrak.