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Abandoned railroad routes in North America
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoIt's missing the Marysvale Branch in Utah.
- bokohut 4y agoI sometimes question how such items come to be posted on HN as many of the non-tech posts here I share great interest in and this topic is no exception. I live next to one of these abandoned railroads, one of the earliest in the country actually, which Daniel Boone wrote about riding along with many U.S. Presidents as well as Kings and Queens of foreign countries. The items I have recovered from surface hunting and metal detecting this area have been eye opening from many aspects. The U.S. National Archives has the blueprints of the design for this railroad I live next to digitized and available online and many years ago I studied it out of curiosity for the value of understanding the history of my area. What I could not have known at that time of studying was that a few weeks later I would discover pieces from the construction that matched the U.S. National Archive designs to a T - I was stunned. I have also since come to learn these pieces are in great demand from avid railroad collectors but I just do it for the lulz and not the money. Through my 10 years of researching and exploring historical information in my area I would share with everyone that if you live near a historical location and have interest in the past do your research first. As a serial entrepreneur my point for the HN community is that opportunity is everywhere and in studying history one can discover exactly where to look for such opportunity. This logic applies to nearly everything.
- coldacid 4y agoThere are plenty of abandoned railways in Canada, none of which seem to be available on this site. The claim of "in North America" is BS. The creator would be better off just saying "in the United States" considering that North America includes Canada, Mexico, and Greenland.
- pandesal 4y agoNot going to lie, before I visited the site, I was hoping it was a hot take article about why Ruby on Rails now suck and people should stop using it and migrate off of it. I was ready for the comment section.
- protomyth 4y agoSorry. I was submitting it to see if anyone would suggest a way to buy the abandoned tracks to start a commuter service since HN has had so many cargo vs person rail stories lately. Ruby would have been a bit too hot a submission for me.
- bombcar 4y agoRailroads are usually loathe to give up right-of-way even if it has been abandoned, but it can be done with enough support and money. Many rail trails are still owned by the railroad with an option to make them rail lines again if they want.
- ghaff 4y agoYes, where I live in the greater Boston area, you've seen a few commuter rail extensions that I assume made use of existing railroad right of ways that were abandoned (ADDED: As in no longer used for rail service) at some point once the rail service became commuter rail service
- Trasmatta 4y agoI already had all my Rails hot takes half composed in my mind before I even finished clicking. What should I do with all this energy now?
- binarynate 4y agoVery interesting site, although not all the rail routes listed are actually abandoned per se. For example, I live next to a popular and well-maintained trail that used to be a railway, and the site still lists it as an abandoned rail line.
- moenzuel 4y agoI noticed the same for my local area. The site listed an abandoned rail that has long since been turned into a popular paved bike path. The pictures for the rail even show the bike path instead of rail.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- asdff 4y agoAbandoned for rail use though. If you are hiking somewhere like the allegeny national forest, these abandoned rail routes are a boon since they are generally raised up out of mucky ground, flat, and easy to navigate along if you know which one you are on. Hunters frequently just walk along the abandoned railways when searching for game. Why not call it a trail at that point? IMO because this isn't built like a trail (which can have complicated terrain or scrambles up or down some steep terrain), its built like a railway, and should be marked as such on a map since that will tell you a lot about the conditions on that route (raised, flat, generally free of obstructions short of fallen trees since abandonment)
- WalterBright 4y agoSeattle has abandoned railways that could be re-used for light rail at minimal cost (they actually sit there with rusting tracks on them). Instead, every effort has been made to destroy those corridors, so that tens of billions of dollars can be blown by blasting new corridors for light rail. https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6122286,-122.1837204,121m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6122286,-122.1837204,121m/da...
- andbberger 4y agofunny example, bellevue is the atherton of seattle. they caused such a stink during planning of the line 2 extension microsoft, boeing and t-mobile sent the city council a letter telling them to shut the hell up
- lostmsu 4y agoI live in Bellevue, but did not track that saga here. Can you link a news article or a discussion that could be made sense of?
- andbberger 4y agothe wiki page is excellent, and clearly written by someone who was tired of all the bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_2_(Sound_Transit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_2_(Sound_Transit)
- golem14 4y agoSeems rather tame compared to Palo Alto's response to BART/Caltrain changes ... :)
- andbberger 4y agogreatest NIMBYs in the world. richard mlynarik's latest grade separation crayons leave palo alto and atherton untouched, which I find hillarious
- sillyquiet 4y agoIt has the rail line that was my childhood companion - it ran maybe 3 miles from my home https://www.abandonedrails.com/nacogdoches-to-loeb https://www.abandonedrails.com/nacogdoches-to-loeb It engendered lots of 'ghost train' campfire stories. And they installed a lot of infrastructure to support it, including highway overpasses and crossings - there are still a couple now-purposeless overpasses on Highway 69 that once crossed it.
- Lobstrosity2022 4y ago
- rrsmtz 4y agoWhy not just say U.S. instead of North America?
- andbberger 4y agowe do a terrible job of corridor preservation in the states. lots of converting old rail right of ways to trails or redeveloping them. the utility of simply leaving them empty, especially in urban areas, is hard to overstate. probably the example in the bay is the dumbarton line, which has been preserved and in a world where CAHSR wasn't politically compromised would be the route off of the caltrain towards the altamont pass. the altamont alignment is technically superior to the chosen pacheco alignment on all metrics (cost, speed, operational constraints), but pacheco was chosen due to lobbying by san jose politicians, who, suffering from a massive inferiority complex, demanded that podunk san jose's diridon intergalactic was on the main line and not served by a branch. that decision, btw, pretty much single-handedly compromises the utility of CAHSR. it severely constraints the tph into SF, makes the SF-sacramento trip uncompetitive, and adds billions in unnecessary infrastructure costs another example is the vasona branch, which branches off the caltrain right of way around cal ave, and slated to be used for a BART line to los gatos during the early days of BARTs development.
- ghaff 4y ago>lots of converting old rail right of ways to trails or redeveloping them Once you make a decision that you don't want something any longer you can't just keep it in stasis forever just in case. As others have mentioned, in many cases, rails converted to trails do maintain railroad right of ways against a future change of heart. Of course, in practice, converting a well-used rail trail back to rail of some sort would be deservedly unpopular in most cases.
- andbberger 4y agosure you can, why not? the utility of keeping right of ways undeveloped is billions of dollars
- exabrial 4y agoI've really started to enjoy biking "rail to trail" lines in Kansas. The Flint Hills Trail is 115 miles of biking, relatively no elevation change... but the best part is absolutely 0 motorized vehicle traffic, making it quite enjoyable. If you ever get a chance to bike it I would, and consider making a donation to the foundation that builds these out.
- beckler 4y agoIf you're in the Atlanta area, we have the PATH foundation which helps create and maintain most of the rail-to-trails in our area! https://www.pathfoundation.org/our-trails https://www.pathfoundation.org/our-trails
- codyb 4y agoThey've done that from NYC to Albany and it's great. As you say, no traffic. I can't think of a much safer way to bike.
- gen220 4y agoI'm not sure I'd characterize that particular trail as "no traffic" [1]. Large segments of the route you describe are along country roads where you share the road with cars and trucks traveling at 55mph. As much as I wish it weren't so! That'd be so much fun. :) Perhaps you're thinking of the Erie canal trail (Buffalo to Albany), which is composed of a much higher proportion of bike trails? [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/05/nyregion/ny-empire-trail.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/05/nyregion/ny-e...
- Melatonic 4y agoMountain Bike needed I assume? Or is it more like a dirt single track?
- flyingfences 4y agoI'm not familiar with this particular trail, but they're usually paved.
- BashiBazouk 4y agoThey have Felton to the Boardwalk run in Santa Cruz county as abandoned but Roaring camp bought it and runs tourist trains on that route. Weekends all year and everyday during the summer... Edit: Searched the site and found it. Looks like the Felton to Campbell is the abandoned part. Not that you would know it from their main map...
- nradov 4y agoIt appears that rail service might get shut down if they can't reach an agreement with the local government on route maintenance costs. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/popular-roaring-camp-railroad-at-center-of-santa-cruz-rail-dispute/2797595/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/popular-roaring-camp-r...
- bachmeier 4y agoIncomplete. Source: I own part of an abandoned rail route not listed.
- brimble 4y agoCan confirm. My family used to own a chunk of land that had part of an abandoned rail line on it (the rail and ties themselves were gone, but the path was very obvious) and the map shows some near it, but not that one.
- EvanAnderson 4y agoSame here. Dad bought the parcels on both sides of the rail line and "reconnected" it back into a single parcel back in the 90s.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoThen provide them the details. https://www.abandonedrails.com/faq.html https://www.abandonedrails.com/faq.html
- paparush 4y agothis is a really nice asset!
- Svip 4y agoMy favourite part about https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ is that it shows abandoned and razed tracks, although you have to zoom in somewhat. I wonder if there is a way to make it highlight those tracks at a higher zoom level.
- dboreham 4y agoSaw the posting and wondered if the site listed any of the many abandoned lines I see here in Montana. Turns out it does: https://www.abandonedrails.com/montana https://www.abandonedrails.com/montana I'm particularly fascinated with the Homestake Pass line, which is easily visible from the adjacent I-90 freeway -- you can see the rails are still in place. Apparently it was never actually closed, they just never ran another train after some date in the 1980s. Subsequently there have been some tunnel collapses that make the line unusable.
- VLM 4y ago
- smm11 4y agoWinter much? You had a valuable post, too bad you had to maghat it. Here's my plug for a nice rails-trail, even in a "Red" state: https://bikecowboytrail.com/ https://bikecowboytrail.com/
- Melatonic 4y agoAll of the abandoned subway stations and tunnels in downtown Los Angeles are pretty damn cool too!
- supernova87a 4y agoOne thing that always catches my eye is seeing from satellite views the oddly shaped ghosts and footprints of long-gone railroad tracks and byways, which for decades after (if not a century), leave their mark on a city's streets and blocks. And then happening to walk by it in person on the ground. Like for example, https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7545858,-122.4138878,311m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7545858,-122.4138878,311m/da... , or https://www.google.com/maps/@37.404972,-122.137255,913m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.404972,-122.137255,913m/data... You can see this in SF Mission and the old Southern Pacific lines, and why some blocks are so oddly shaped, and why there are parks that have the strangest configurations. Out of place diagonal lots, parks, roads. Very hard to erase those legacy shapes. Similarly, seeing long stretches of green or empty space and realizing that there's a giant water pipe underneath stretching from the Sierras, and that's why there will never be a house built on that <xyz> lot. (Funny, and I never seem to find among my friends anyone else who takes interest in it.)
- asveikau 4y agoThere's tons of spots like this just east of the mission, downhill from Potrero.. lots of oddly shaped buildings and parking lots too. Near San Bruno Ave near division you can still see railroad tracks on some of the streets, partially covered by street asphalt.
- gkop 4y agoWhat’s the easiest way to tell the difference between a buried-under-the-asphalt old freight line and a buried-under-the-asphalt old streetcar line?
- asveikau 4y agoThat's an interesting question. The area north of Potrero didn't become residential until quite recently and I don't think they ran streetcars in the specific place I'm thinking of. They were basically tracks in an industrial part of town headed in the direction of Southern Pacific rail.
- 4y ago
- PostQuadlude 4y ago
- bitwize 4y agoThere was an abandoned railway near my house when I was growing up. I used to go for nature walks there and see wildflowers, hummingbirds, butterflies, etc.
- chrisbrandow 4y agothis is so great
- mjg59 4y agohttps://www.railmaponline.com/USWestMap.php https://www.railmaponline.com/USWestMap.php only covers the western US, but has more detailed mapping in most cases.
- einpoklum 4y agoSo, when is the US going to finally wisen up and switch back from automobile-focused to railway-focused transit? :-(
- twobitshifter 4y agoTo the way it once was, never. In many places, these glory days had a train on the tracks a couple times a day in each direction and that was attractive. People were happy sleeping on trains and the time taken to travel was usually less than the alternative of steam boats, dirt roads, or horseback. Even in the best case of NYC where much of its rail infrastructure stayed active, and the area population soared, subway ridership hasn’t bounced back to 1946.
- munk-a 4y agoAs soon as car ownership stops being culturally associated with maturity and freedom - and that's probably never going to happen.
- pessimizer 4y agoSo as soon as there's no money to be made in manufacturing cars.
- enriquto 4y agoIt's already happeneing. Many of us associate car ownership with immaturity, captivity, and a general sense of being annoying to oneself and others. Each morning, during my bike commute, I see thousands of car-drivers stuck inside their cages, stopped in traffic, and I feel sad for these poor people; and at the same time annoyed for the enormous space they take, the noise they make, the pollution, and how ugly their absurd machines are.
- nerdponx 4y agoIt's seen as freedom because transit sucks.
- betwixthewires 4y agoNever, we have airplanes.
- xyzzy21 4y agoThere's definitely a whole lot more than listed - easily 10x. The half dozen I know about in each CA and NY aren't listed at all.
- betwixthewires 4y agoI remember I used to go to this old railroad bridge and hang out and fish, there were signs of life there, bb gun marks on the metal, graffiti, beer bottles. I wasn't the only one spending time in this space. It made me think about how we think of infrastructure as animals. When we think of a road, we think of it in much the same way we think of a forest or a river. It's just there, a permanent part of the landscape. But these things must be maintained, and all of it will be ruins one day. Every single thing we have built will lose it's purpose, and eventually it's form. And in much the same way you see things like wasps and pigeons moving into unused structures, humans will do the same in our own human way.
- jmacd 4y ago
- helloooooooo 4y ago
- qiskit 4y agoDoes abandoned rails have enough of a following to make selling t-shirts worth it? Seems like everyone is selling t-shirts.
- bombcar 4y agoTo sell a tshirt all you have to do is upload a graphic, and collect some royalty.
- pugworthy 4y agoThere is some great potential for the land these old rails occupied if they are still owned by the rail company but no longer have tracks. Some of the spaces in urban/city areas are probably not the most desirable places, but others can (and have been) transformed into interesting spaces. A great California Bay Area example is the REAP Center in Alameda. It's on a half mile of old rail line easement that's now what you might call an Urban Farm Makerspace, though those that make it happen would describe it much more eloquently. I've stayed there a number of times when visiting, and it's this wonderfully peaceful place where you feel like you're away from the city, but are close to the estuary with Jack London Square basically in sight. If you're ever wanting to see what an old rail line space can turn into, go check it out. It's anything but an "abandoned rail line". https://www.reapcenter.org https://www.reapcenter.org
- IRP 4y ago"North America"? I think they meant USA...
- honksillet 4y agoSome routes were taken from rancher via eminent domain or similar. Basically forced easement onto private property. Some of those easements no long exist with the rail routes being abandoned.
- Stratoscope 4y agoFor anyone in the San Francisco Peninsula and South Bay area, here are a few that may be of interest. Foothill Expressway was originally a train line. If you know where the old Fry's Electronics was in Palo Alto, the line branched off from the main Southern Pacific line near there, went by the loading docks behind the buildings where Fry's was - it was a major cannery at the time - went through what is now Bol Park, and turned onto Foothill where the VA hospital is now. Foothill makes a bend to the right at Homestead, but the train line continued straight through at that point, going through what is now the Trader Joe's parking lot. If you notice a diagonal NW-SE path through the parking lot that continues onto Homestead Ct and Peninsular Ave, that was the railroad alignment. Highway 280 wasn't there at the time, of course, so the line continued straight through to the still-existing Union Pacific line that serves the Kaiser Permanente quarry, and then down to the line that parallels Winchester Blvd in Campbell. This right-of-way currently has three tracks on it: northbound and southbound light rail lines, and the Union Pacific line. I used to live in an apartment that overlooked this railway, and it was great fun to hear and see the Union Pacific freight train that comes through twice a week. Just like at Fry's, you can see several of the loading docks in the buildings in downtown Campbell. On the east side of that line, there was a branch that went south to serve the New Almaden mines. If you ever wondered where Camden Ave in San Jose got its name, it wasn't from the city in New Jersey. This line was called the Campbell-Almaden line, so CAMpbell-almaDEN is where the street name came from. If you drive Camden Ave from Campbell, you may notice an oddly gentle right turn at the junction with Hillsdale Ave. This turn was gentle for the trains. Farther south, Camden takes a slight right at Clovis, just before Blossom Hill, and there is a powerline right of way that continues in a straight line where the railroad was. The tracks then crossed Guadalupe Creek and followed what is now Redmond Avenue, then turned south toward New Almaden. Back to Palo Alto, if you know of Hawthorne Avenue, three blocks northwest of University, that was a train line too! Lytton and Emerson were streets at the time, but Hawthorne was a spur line that served the Catholic University in Menlo Park (now St. Patrick's Seminary). It branched off the main Southern Pacific line by the water tower, followed Hawthorne and then made a bend to the left onto what is now Middlefield, then a gentle right into the University. It split into two tracks on each side of the main building. If you are interested in this stuff, I highly recommend the USGS topographic maps. They have the complete historical maps all online! https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/ https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/ For example, here is the 1899 Palo Alto topo where you can see that Hawthorne train line: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ht-bin/tv_browse.pl?id=8db99b827f55d7eb4fe0be7afbfe783b https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ht-bin/tv_browse.pl?id=8db99b827f55d7...
- csours 4y agoHere's one in Austin - it's pretty cool to see how other infrastructure has used it's Right of Way, including the Southern Walnut Creek Trail, electrical transmission lines, and other roads - https://www.abandonedrails.com/georgetown-to-pershing https://www.abandonedrails.com/georgetown-to-pershing Note: this is next to another rail line that is still in use. I think the commentors on the site discuss that, but I don't quite understand what they are saying. Edit: looking at this further - the Right of Way is nearly intact for most of it's original length. It would be so cool to have a bike trail for this entire thing.