Every notable passenger train route I could verify, drawn on one map with no basemap under it, so the rail lines themselves trace the coastlines. 1,166 routes across 119 countries, about 309,000 km of line once shared corridors are counted once.
Coloured by what kind of journey it is: 459 classic intercity, 246 scenic, 138 heritage, 135 high-speed, 108 night trains, 48 funiculars, 32 luxury cruise trains.
The geometry is the part I have spent the most time on. Route shapes are traced from OpenStreetMap railway relations and ways rather than drawn by hand, so the lines sit on real track. This week I finished a pass that put the last stragglers on their actual alignment, including a Saudi line that turned out to be running 200 km up a branch and back down again.
It is a free hobby project, no ads and no signup, and the route data is open. Corrections are genuinely welcome and get credited; forum readers have already fixed a number of errors in it.
Caveat worth stating plainly: it is a curated atlas of notable routes, not a complete inventory of the world’s railways. Somewhere like China or Germany has far more track than the routes shown here.
I’m surprised. For how densely populated India is, I expected to see more rail lines.
They might have more rail routes than shown on the map. Starting with the easier routes, then harder and harder and harder:)
The OP made a rather strict selection of railways he found to be “notable” so I wouldn’t take this map to represent density by any means.
Has no one ever thought of building a railway across all of north africa?
The germans, but slavery was legal until 1945 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Building_of_the_Trans-Saharan_Railway_in_North_Africa_by_slave_labour_in_WWII_1941-1942_(11).jpg
If you are interested in all rail infrastructure checkout OpenRailwayMap
It’s the new vector version with clickable features, now it can display routes as well. Click on a rail than you can click on the routes at the bottom of the popup.
Not curated even the slightest, just all the data, as it should be.
There should be a heat map to show how late trains are in the routes. Canada would just be red 🤣
GTFS Realtime has that data. For Canada this site shows the delays, currently Vancouver-Toronto train is 37 minutes late: https://maps.catenarymaps.org/?page=trip&chateau=viarail&trip=111&route=8-119&start_date=20260729#map=6.2%2F50.288%2F-92
It’s just up to programmers to create a map which displays these feeds. E.g. .for Hungary we have this site which shows delays real time: https://vonatinfo.mav.hu/ Green is less than 5 minutes late, yellow 6-14 mins, orange 14-59 mins, red more than 1 hours. This is an official site, but the data is public, so 3rd parties can build around that. That’s how Gmaps knows how much a train is late.
The problem is that not all of the lines on OpenRailwayMap are currently having passenger traffic. Perfect example of that is Albania, where they had railways during communism, but it is discontinued at the moment and will be for many years.
This project tries something else. To be factual and easy to use for the average user at the same time. The information displayed on Railrouter is a bit different, because the average user want to see different type of information.
I understand that curated data is not optimal, but I do not have a community behind me and I do not expect it either. Therefore, it will be a long time before it will be up to a similar standard to OpenRailwayMap. For someone like me, I will rather use Railrouter because it is just simpler and not to technical. I am not trying to compete against OpenRailwayMap.
Instead whenever someone is critical on forums or in the internet general, I will verify the feedback and then implement it where the user will be cited as well. Corrections log: https://trainrouter.com/corrections/
Yes, different projects for different goals. OpenRailwayMap even displays the reference numbers of switches, and goes into displaying micromapped details of train stations.
For TrainRouter you could read the actual routes from GTFS. Most European transport companies publish their schedules in this format, and it contains the geometry of the routes, not just a list of stops. You can browse some GTFS feeds here: https://www.transit.land/map Another nice, free api is here: https://transitous.org/
The “shapes” file should contain the data you are looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTFS#shapes
And here is me thinking I (being a railway enthusiast and an OSM contributor) would have already known this existed. :D Thanks for the link, I was previously only aware of the raster version.
BTW thanks for the link for OpenRailwayMap! I have not seen this version before right now:)
How did you decide which ones were notable?
(Also known as “why didn’t you include these two insignificant villages near where I live that nobody else has heard of”) :)
How did you decide which ones were notable?:
- Whichever one is easy to get on the map, more will come afterwards:)
Why didn’t you include these two insignificant villages near where I live that nobody else has heard of:
- Have not added all yet but hopefully soon. I am working on to have branch lines as well since I want to have all, all, all, all passenger lines which is running at the moment.
Wow. That’s a big project. I admire your determination. It’s a beautiful map, by the way. Thank you for sharing :)
Those European train lines make my pants tighter
MORE
Working on that like a slave in Egypt building the pyramids
Omg it is too tight!
Sad Brazilian noises
Wow, living in Europe, I had no idea worlds railways are so undeveloped. It’s basically just Europe and Japan with a little bit of China.
There are so many lines I want to try around the world! Especially China because of their crazy high speed network…
Whoa, this is really cool! I can tell it took a ton of work.
I made this little map a while ago that was supposed to be an extremely basic viablity study of high speed rail lines in europe, visualised on a map. It’s cool being able to compare it with real life!
It is really fun, but crazy amount of work
Konkan railway goes beyond Goa.
Will see to it:)
I’d love to see a map showing costs. For is tance. Is any other country charging 10x the price of an Airline ticket to reach the same destination by train, is just Canada ?
Australia that one from the south to the top and the one from the west to the east are basically tourist trains thousands of dollars for tickets.
Sadly it is also a problem in Norway as well (Where I am from). Sometimes they even have bus for train within very short notice which is sad.
How much is an airline ticket? I’ve heard of them being as cheap as 40€ but I’ve never seen a train ticket cost over 140€ for a one day trip and that is if you don’t book in advance.
Can’t believe you don’t have the Leeds to Morecambe line, or the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (used in The Railway Children). Settle to Carlisle is a very scenic route, but not particularly used.
Will see to them later:)
The one I used to take daily is not in it. When I get back home I’ll see if I can add it.
Hopefully it is already added before you manage to come home;)
Cannot promise anything though…
Welp I forgot about it anyway.
I bet you at least 15 of those high speeds are in South Korea
E: and let’s not forget a nod too their metropolis area non-conductor subway trams on wheels running every fifteen minutes until well after midnight
I have never been to South Korea, but I really like South Koreans! I have to go there soon:)
I remember being in a cafe in Paris ran by South Koreans and it was one of the best cafes I have ever been to. They have so great style in fashion, design and music.
This is sad for so many reasons…
.jpg){kind=link}