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National Rail Network Map
- exabrial 4y agoJust a footnote: this includes a lot of lines that don't exist, have been abandoned, or repurposed. As an example in Kansas, the steel rail lines from Osawatomie to Osage City have long been ripped up and scrapped. They are now rails-to-trails projects. Several other of the railroads marked are the same way (I know because well I visit these places quite often). Great use of the land btw, and makes for some beautiful passage across the state.
- musicale 4y agoFrom the map, one could imagine an epic train trip from Guadalajara to San Francisco to Hudson Bay.
- kitd 4y agoHaving a map of the whole world seems a bit superfluous ;)
- poszlem 4y ago.. of the US.
- dan_pixelflow 4y agoI assumed this was the UK, because our rail network is the 'National Rail' network. Could the fact it's the US be added to the title? Edit: It's not just the US (!) Maybe a 'North American rail network map'?
- dukoid 4y agohttps://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ has everything, including colorization options by speed, electrification or gauge
- Steve44 4y agoThat's really interesting. In the UK you can cross reference with the National Library of Scotland maps[1] which allows you to overlay quite a few different maps of an area over different time periods. [1] London Kings Cross area with large rail yard to the north. By changing the transparency you can see things like ST Martins College and the new Coal Drops Yard development. The new British Library is also built over Somers Town Goods Depot. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=51.53529&lon=-0.12620&layers=170&b=1 https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=51.53529&lon=-0...
- iisan7 4y agowould be even better if it had the ownership/trackage rights that the other map had, though, that's quite interesting.
- dom96 4y agoThis is much better. Honestly maybe the submission link should be changed to this?
- noneeeed 4y agoThis is great. Although looking at the UK map makes me sad, all those abandoned lines. It makes you wonder what the country would be like if we'd leaned into the rail system instead of tearing up a chunck of it following the Beaching Report. The most interesting ones for me are the additional lines that crossed the Pennines, linking the north together much better than it is today.
- afterburner 4y agoBehold the rail link to Churchill, which no road leads to.
- conorcleary 4y agoMoosonee is the one I'd like to see connected by road.
- Etheryte 4y agoThe title reminds me of an oft-cited anecdote of how someone running an online shop of this or that sort can tell that an order is from the US — it will be the only one where the provided address doesn't include the country.
- ectopod 4y agoMy American sister in law does this when she's posting stuff from America to her non-American relatives. Her parcels tend to bounce around America until some postal worker figures out she meant the original Worcester, or wherever. I'm surprised they get delivered. Impressed too.
- lqet 4y agoFor fun I once send a postcard to my parents from Spain to Germany without a ZIP code, without the country, misspelling the town and street, and writing "the last house on the right" (in German) as a house number. It arrived without problems.
- thesuitonym 4y agoI worked a summer as a postal carrier in the US, and I was surprised at how far off from the official address standard you can get and still get delivered. For reference, our address standard is ## Street Name,<cr> City, State, ZIP. There was one neighborhood in particular that had a name like "Edgeview Cottages", and instead of getting letters addressed to 20 Apple St, you'd see Edgeview #20. It's crazy how people expect the post office to be able to figure this out.
- iudqnolq 4y agoEmbarrassingly, I didn't believe it when I was told USPS OCR rejects less than 5% of hand-written address. I assumed that even if you could read the writing, the format would be too irregular to parse a lot of the time. Part of the reason I was wrong is that so much of the address is redundant. I think they only use four letters of the street name, for example, before they essentially always can narrow it down to one possibility in their database.
- londons_explore 4y agoWhat rail needs next is better co-ordination. Connecting multiple carriages together to form a train was an amazing innovation - those carriages are separated by inches, whereas trains are separated by miles. If everything could be separated by inches, we could have a network with 1000x the throughput. 1000x the throughput means we can use all the existing (expensive) rails, and be able to transport everything the interstate road network does today. And, with enough innovation, that's possible. Imagine an infinitely long train. If more cargo needed to be added to the train, while in motion at say 60 mph, one link in the train could be broken, the gap widened to fit an extra carriage, and then an extra carriage comes in from a side rail, just like merging on a highway, and the whole lot is reattached again. All while still moving. Infinitely long trains already exist - for example an escalator is a continuous 'train' of steps in a loop. Disconnecting trains while in motion already exists - it was done regularly on the british railway 50 years ago. And the rest is just a coordination and timing problem - one that computers are really good at.
- twobitshifter 4y agoEh, not really that simple. The coupling forces with very long trains can cause the trains to break apart. You need to distribute locomotives throughout the train to provide power not just insert new cars. The freight railroads are already running very long trains based on computer modeling and they’re getting pushback from the govt. https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/railroads-use-of-long-trains-to-go-under-the-microscope/ https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/railroads-...
- mellavora 4y agoSo, kind of like consistent hashing?
- mschuster91 4y ago> If everything could be separated by inches, we could have a network with 1000x the throughput. 1000x the throughput means we can use all the existing (expensive) rails, and be able to transport everything the interstate road network does today. The problem: most rail runs above ground, with level road crossings. Running trains at the same spatial density as cars would massively impact wildlife, and you'd need to rebuild all the road crossings as well. Additionally, you'd need to reconstruct a lot of bridges and other infrastructure as it was never built to handle that amount of load and traffic. Another limiting factor is that switches need time to operate, you don't want to end up with the tip of the train going straight and the rear part of the train going off. That requires a further minimum distance between trains.
- bregma 4y agoA quick check shows plenty of rail lines that haven't existed in several decades: the tracks lifted and the lands sold off long ago. Not very useful if you're looking for information.
- foreigner 4y agoWith those colours it looks like a game of Ticket To Ride
- kingsloi 4y agoDoes anyone know of any current or past projects (AI or not) that measures how many miles of train carriages pass through a particular intersection or particular line? I know there's an API for AMTrak, but anything similar for commercial trains/lines? I'm often stopped by trains, (what feel like) over 10 miles long, doing 30-50mph. Some carriages carry uncovered coal, and are left parked near my neighbourhood for days. I'd love to track how many miles of carriages, and what type of carriages, pass through my neck of the woods, either with something like a Vizycam, and train it to count the carriages, or even by sound or vibration, and get a basic count, at what times, what dB, etc.
- bombcar 4y agoThe railfan forums often have very knowledgeable people, and many trains are run on schedules (our local track has a train one direction in morning and the other in evening). If you find someone who railfans in your area they probably know most of what you want. It shouldn't be hard to count cars if you wanted to, either by sound or laser or something similar. People have even done it by earth vibration.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoNot what you asked for but I've seen recent articles and videos stating that trains are getting longer, which means more time consumed by those waiting at crossings.
- dankle 4y ago”National” meaning US, yet again.
- b800h 4y agoSo from looking at this, I wonder if it's possible to do a (very) rough circumnavigation of the USA by train?