[HN Gopher] National Rail Network Map
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National Rail Network Map
Author : jonbaer
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-09-14 08:12 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.arcgis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.arcgis.com)
| b800h wrote:
| So from looking at this, I wonder if it's possible to do a (very)
| rough circumnavigation of the USA by train?
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Head over to Reddit and go to the vagabond subreddit. There is
| a lot of train riding info there.
| bregma wrote:
| A 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.
| drmpeg wrote:
| Same with some of the Union Pacific industrial spurs I'm
| familiar with here in Silicon Valley.
| Hogarth01 wrote:
| I was going to mention a similar thing. There are some UP
| tracks in Southern California that haven't existed in over 30
| years now, if not more.
| dankle wrote:
| "National" meaning US, yet again.
| afterburner wrote:
| Behold the rail link to Churchill, which no road leads to.
| conorcleary wrote:
| Moosonee is the one I'd like to see connected by road.
| kingsloi wrote:
| Does 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.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Not 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| The 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.
| exabrial wrote:
| Just 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.
| kitd wrote:
| Having a map of the whole world seems a bit superfluous ;)
| wongarsu wrote:
| Only because both North and South America lack rail links to
| other continents. Afro-Eurasia is interconnected by rail
| [deleted]
| undantag wrote:
| Or aspirational :)
| foreigner wrote:
| With those colours it looks like a game of Ticket To Ride
| Etheryte wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| For 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Embarrassingly, 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.
| tialaramex wrote:
| On the other hand, for example every country's stamps say which
| country issued the stamps... except the UK. Our stamps just
| have a silhouette of Liz on them (eventually they'll have a
| picture of Charlie instead) because that's just how it's always
| been.
| p1mrx wrote:
| There is at least one US stamp design without a country name:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_Flag_5c_196.
| ..
| tialaramex wrote:
| Interesting, I looked at the collection that's from (at the
| Smithsonian) and it didn't have any more in the pages I
| scanned. I wonder what the story is.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| On a similar note, it's also a common cliche in the context of
| international group introductions: "Hi, I'm
| Olaf and I'm from Lund, Sweden" "I'm Francisca and
| I come from Cordoba, Argentina" "My name is
| Jayalalithaa and I'm from Erode, India" "Hey
| everybody, my name's Peter but my friends call me Pete. I'm
| from Columbus, Georgia, and I'm super excited to be here"
| samatman wrote:
| The population of the state of Georgia is about that of
| Sweden, so that makes sense.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| The population of other national subdivisions is greater
| than that of Sweden and of most US states. That doesn't
| make sensible to introduce oneself with _" I'm from Minas
| Gerais"_, _" I come from North Rhine-Westphalia"_ or _" I'm
| from Kaduna State"_ in an international context.
| samatman wrote:
| I've never heard someone from Berlin clarify that it's in
| Germany either.
| juki wrote:
| It might make sense if Francisca had just said "from
| Cordoba" and Jayalalithaa "from Erode, Tamil Nadu". Since
| everyone was talking about countries rather than states,
| one would reasonably expect Peter to do the same, and thus
| assume he is from Georgia rather than the USA.
| musicale wrote:
| From the map, one could imagine an epic train trip from
| Guadalajara to San Francisco to Hudson Bay.
| londons_explore wrote:
| What 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.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Rail doesn't need technological pipe dreams. A well run rail
| network is already really good at moving freight and
| passengers.
|
| The issue in the US is decades of cost cutting by the freight
| operators. This includes a lack of infrastructure investment,
| optimizing cost over speed, and overworking employees to an
| extreme amount.
|
| The technologies for better rail already exist. We just need to
| actually use them in America.
| its_bbq wrote:
| And waiting for a train to pass through the road is already bad
| enough
| SECProto wrote:
| level crossings are terrible for a number of reasons
| themikesanto wrote:
| If these ideas were viable, the class 1 carriers would have
| already implemented them.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Eh, 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-...
| mellavora wrote:
| So, kind of like consistent hashing?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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.
| poszlem wrote:
| .. of the US.
| dan_pixelflow wrote:
| I 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'?
| OJFord wrote:
| Me too. Clickbait Case's Fault Really. (But that's present in
| the submission, it's not just HN's auto-clickbaitiser. (But
| I'll take the opportunity to say I wish it wouldn't do that
| anyway.))
| dukoid wrote:
| https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ has everything, including
| colorization options by speed, electrification or gauge
| noneeeed wrote:
| This 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.
| midasuni wrote:
| Not much different. Service frequencies and speeds on those
| lines we're not suitable for modern day, without large
| capacity increase in cities they couldn't really be
| increased.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Although looking at the UK map makes me sad, all those
| abandoned lines.
|
| Germany is just as bad. Between 1994 (the begin of the
| privatization) and now we lost 6.200km of rail
| infrastructure [1] - something like 15-ish percent.
|
| My s/o and I went on a two week railroad trip through the
| whole of Germany. Seeing rotting or half-ass dismantled
| rails, former shift yards and smashed-in former other
| infrastructure just hurted to watch. Everything has gone
| downhill, there was barely any investment in upkeep of
| tracks and buildings, only in new construction of expensive
| billions-euros high speed rail... the reason is simple: DB
| Netz, the privatized infrastructure operator, has to pay
| for upkeep on their own (from usage fees) while the federal
| and state governments (and in some cases like the Munich
| S-Bahn also the counties and cities) pay for all the high-
| profile projects.
|
| We had so, _so many_ industrial areas served by rail as
| well: in 1994, over 11.000 companies and industrial zones
| had their own railway attachment - today, it 's barely
| 2.300, a reduction of 80% [2]. No wonder our highways and
| side roads are overcrowded with trucks. The reason for
| _that_ is that unlike the US, Europe still has chain-link
| and buffer couplers, which means shunting yards are
| extremely staff-intensive to run, and shunting from and to
| the industrial areas is expensive as well... which means
| that, thanks to privatization, DB Cargo was more or less
| forced to shut down the industrial zone supply because the
| absurd losses this branch brought in could no longer be
| cross-subsidized by passenger rail.
|
| [1] https://www.allianz-pro-
| schiene.de/themen/infrastruktur/schi...
|
| [2] https://www.rnd.de/wirtschaft/gueterverkehr-auf-die-
| schiene-...
| bearmode wrote:
| >something like 15-ish percent.
|
| In the UK it was somewhere around 25% of rail lines and
| 55% of stations. Complete short-sightedness.
| timthorn wrote:
| Though if abandoned lines weren't so common, we wouldn't
| have nearly so many heritage lines still running steam
| engines in their natural habitat.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I know there's a lot of (very justified) vilification of
| Beeching, and Marples who was transport secretary at the
| time.
|
| But actually Britain _had_ leaned in hard to the railways,
| by undertaking a large modernisation scheme [1]. The
| problem is, they did it a bit too early, in the 1950s, when
| electricity seemed like a risky bet so they stuck with
| steam which was the UK 's core strength.
|
| Of course, that turned out to be a mistake in retrospect.
| In the 1960s, investing in the railways in any form at all
| would've seemed like making the same sort of mistake as
| just a few years ago.
|
| One interesting analysis I saw about the Beeching cuts said
| that the worse sin is that they did not preserve rights of
| way i.e. when closing a line they should have built a road
| and run a bus service (as Beeching's report recommended) or
| at least preserved it for potential rail reopening, but in
| many cases they sold the land off to developers so the
| chance was lost.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1955_Moder
| nisat...
| samizdis wrote:
| Ian Hislop, the editor of _Private Eye_ magazine and
| regular star of the satirical TV show _Have I Got News
| for You_ , made a documentary 12 or so years ago - _Ian
| Hislop Goes Off the Rails_ - which looked at the Beeching
| cuts and, more broadly, the history of the UK rail
| network. It 's nicely done, and never descends into an
| anguished, hand-wringing rant. Sadly, it's no longer
| available on BBC iPlayer, but it's on YouTube (split into
| six episodes):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ian+hislop+o
| ff+...
| martinald wrote:
| Most of the closed lines were seriously seriously unviable
| and had really poor service frequencies.
|
| There was definitely mistakes (Pennines) but overall most
| of the lines would have had to be closed at some point.
| They often connected tiny towns/villages by circuitous
| routes, often with stations ages from the actual place they
| were meant to be serving.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The northeast US is also dense with abandoned lines that
| can never be rebuilt. I assume they are not on the map
| because they've been built on top of or otherwise
| completely ripped up.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Also, on OpenRailwayMap some abandoned lines only show up
| at very close zoom levels. I see a lot of that in
| Illinois.
| SECProto wrote:
| Not everything! While it has rail lines, and abandoned rail
| lines, and surface light rail (streetcar/tram/trolley) lines,
| it is missing abandoned streetcar/trolley lines. (They
| existed in a lot of North American cities until the 40s-50s
| ish)
|
| Despite that minor absence, the map you linked is clearly
| superior
| lqet wrote:
| The map is based on OpenStreetMap data, so it's quite easy
| to add the abandoned streetcar and trolley lines if you
| know their original course.
| SECProto wrote:
| While I appreciate the sentiment, the OSM wiki
| specifically says[1] "In locations where the railway has
| been replaced by new buildings and roads, the mapping of
| such features becomes out of scope for OpenStreetMap.
| Historical mapping can occur on Open Historical Map."
|
| (Just checked - OHM doesn't seem to have any data
| whatsoever - present or historical. Maybe I don't know
| how to use the interface, but all I see is land/water
| borders)
|
| [1]
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Demolished_Railway
| habi wrote:
| OSM builds on verifiability. If there is nothing there
| 'on the ground' anymore it should not be mapped.
| SECProto wrote:
| Right. In the two cities I have personal experience with,
| the tracks and/or sleepers are still there, just paved
| over. They are evident (and briefly verifiable) when
| potholes develop or roadwork excavations go into those
| areas.
|
| Regardless of whether it's more suited to OSM or OHM, I
| just think it would be a neat feature to have on Open
| Railway Map.
| Steve44 wrote:
| That'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.
| ..
| dom96 wrote:
| This is much better. Honestly maybe the submission link
| should be changed to this?
| iisan7 wrote:
| would be even better if it had the ownership/trackage rights
| that the other map had, though, that's quite interesting.
| rjmunro wrote:
| I was expecting something like one of these maps too:
| https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations_destinations/rail-ma...
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(page generated 2022-09-14 23:02 UTC)