Amtrak's Track

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

This is a summary of the track used by Amtrak. By my count this consists of 21,745 route miles. The current system is the smallest in the 34 years Amtrak has been operating.
I am listing each route by current ownership, traditional ownership and mileage by state. I am deleting duplicate routes such as Autotrain or the Vermonter between Washington and New York City.

Western Long Distance Trains

Coast Starlight
Seattle to Los Angeles 1,389 miles
Seattle-186 miles BNSF-Portland-1,202 Union Pacific-Mission Tower-1 Metrolink- Los Angeles
Seattle-176 Northern Pacific-Vancouver-10 Spokane, Portland and Seattle-Portland-1,202 Southern Pacific-Mission Tower-1 Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal-Los Angeles
Washington 177, Oregon 348, California 864

Empire Builder
Seattle to Chicago 2,206 miles
Seattle-1,788 BNSF-St. Anthony-2 Minnesota Commercial-Merriam Park-384 Canadian Pacific-Rondout-32 Metra-Chicago
Seattle-316 Great Northern-Lyons-8 Burlington Northern-Sunset Jct.-68 Northern Pacific-Sandpoint-2 Burlington Northern-Boyer-89 Great Northern-Ripley-64 Burlington Northern-Stryker-995 Great Northern-Fargo-178 Northern Pacific-St Cloud-68 Great Northern-St. Anthony-2 Minnesota Transfer-Merriam Park-416 Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific-Chicago
Washington 349, Idaho 102, Montana 668, North Dakota 424, Minnesota 380, Wisconsin 235, Illinois 48

Portland Empire Builder
Portland to Spokane 378 miles
Portland-378 BNSF-Spokane
Portland-230 Spokane, Portland and Seattle-SP&S Jct.-148 Northern Pacific-Spokane
Oregon 9, Washington 369
Westbound trains use 10 miles of ex SP&S west of Spokane.

California Zephyr
Oakland to Chicago 2,425 miles
Oakland-1,388 Union Pacific-Denver-1,036 BNSF-Roosevelt Road-1 Amtrak-Chicago
Oakland-557 Southern Pacific-Elko-242 Western Pacific-Smelter-18 Western Pacific or Union Pacific-Salt Lake City-571 Denver and Rio Grande Western-Denver-1,036 Chicago, Burlington and Quincy-Roosev

2

[?]
Great job, but in your detailing of the Southwest Chief’s sponsor lines, can you tell me where “Cameron” is? Somewhere near Galesburg?

I’m asking because most (but not all) of us know that BNSF’s Southern Transcon. route no longer consists of just the mainline AT&SF. The route out of Chicago is no longer Joliet-Streator-Chillicothe-Galesburg, but Aurora-Mendota-Princeton-Galesburg.

My buddy and I followed all of U.S. 34 from Ogden Avenue in Chicago to the Mississippi River bridge to Burlington, IA last week. A lot of contact with the Southern Transcon. and a lot of movement within it!

[;)][?]

3

Cameron is about 8 miles west of Galesburg. You can blow the BNSF map up to about 600x and creep around the whole system. The best map on the web in my view.
www.bnsf.com/tools/reference/division_maps/?menu=5&submenu=0

4

Dale,

Thanks for all the hard work. Great job!

Jim

5

Interesting compilation.

One comment: The Wolverine and Blue Water trains show as traveling 44 miles through Indiana, and the Pere Marquette shows 50. The two routes diverge at Porter, largely parallel each other (no more than a mile or so apart) through Porter and LaPorte Counties, and enter Michigan within a short distance of each other. I don’t mean to shoot the messenger, but how on earth does the CSX routing gain those six extra miles?

Actually, the question should probably be, why is the NS/Amtrak route so short? Using highway mileposts the I-94/I-90 routing that most closely follows these tracks through Indiana yields about 51 miles.

6

Carl
Thanks for pointing that out. I am sure there are a few more errors in there.
I believe the 45 miles for the Wolverine and the Blue Water is correct and 46 is correct for the Pere Marquette rather than 44 and 50. The C&O line takes a bit of a bend south of Michigan City.
The Interstate takes a big detour around East Chicago to run south of the Calumet River and another detour around Michigan City.

7

Still a fantastic project, Nanaimo, I appreciate it very much.
And thanx for the reference to the map. I have a hardcopy BNSF map, but it reduces Illinois to about the size of two matchbook covers.

_ _ 0 _ !

allen

8

That’s Bloom as in CP-Bloom. [8D]

9

Great jop. Interesting to get a comment on the condition and speeds allowed on the various segments. Would take a lot of work thought!

10

On New York - Boston, by error, you put “Harford” in one place where you meant New Haven. Hartford is on the New Haven - Springfield route, and I don’t think there is a change in ownership at that particular point. Yes, New Haven changes from Metro North to Amtrak— except: really State Line NY-Connecticut (just east of Portchester) to New Haven is really owned by Connecticut DOT and operated by Metro North. (This is also true of the New Canaan, Danbury, and Waterbury branches that don’t have Amtrak service.) I think either Amtrak or Connecticut DOT now own New Haven - Springfield, with no change in ownership at Hartford.

11

Thanks Dave. I got that fixed now. I got a bit overwhelmed and can’t do a proper proofreading on it.
Dale

12

[wow] Quite a labor and very much appreciated. Hope you don’t mind if I copy it for my archives of useful stuff [?]

You may want to consider updating those midwest listings to include:

The Kansas City Mule and St. Louis Mule travel daily between St. Louis and Kansas City, MO. The Ann Rutledge travels daily between Kansas City and Chicago, IL. (from Amtrak’s web site)

Again, most impressive and quite a lot of work indeed! [tup]

13

wow, very interesting, i think i am gonna have to print that out, nice work!