This is an interesting map of where the abandoned rail lines were (are) in North America:
Dave
Cool Dave!
I’ve looked around before and found this site you can do a state by state search:
https://www.abandonedrails.com/
Not sure if it’s the same site you found.
Mike.
The original of that map would be highly useful. The problem is that what you actually linked is this:
which is just a JPEG picture, and not a very big one.
I could not find the link on Explored Planet to the original site or link that contains this information. Please advise.
In the meantime I know some of the lines in question will be shown in Open Railway Map…
and on mobile devices
Mike’s link has the detail state by state zoom in view where you can click on the line and see pictures that have been posted on each one. Pretty neat.
–Randy
Well Overmod, I don’t know what to say. I found the admittedly poorly detailed map on the internet and I thought it would interesting to share. I thought that the map would be interesting in and of itself given the overview that it provided. I had no intentions of posting an encylopedia of fallen flags and abandoned track. I apologise if my post was not up to your standards.
Instead of making negative comments, why don’t you just do the work to find a better map and post it?
With respect,
Dave
I find it fascinating how rail lines have come and gone. Also lines promoted and not built.
Then transferring one of those lines into model form. Which I did with my Leeds Sovereign Street, Crown Point Yard and Clarence Dock. Finding out more history. The traffic that ran on it. Why the decline. What if fortunes had favored the line instead. All good fun.
David
I’m not sure what it shows and doesn’t show. Using Mike’s link, I went looking for the old C&WI 4-track main into Dearborn Station in Chicago, and there is nothing there.
Rich
The map is an ongoing project and I have talked to the gentelman who runs it about abandoned lines in my town. Very nice guy and a fun map to explore. New lines pop up everyday. Try this link
You can even click the lines and will tell you from where they ran, what year, what railroad. some even have stories. But as always, theres more info on some than others, so some when you click on them just says how long and what railroad.
Thanks for making it a clickable link!
Because you posted it and might know where the ‘real’ map was located?
I’m sure if I rooted around a while I could stumble across the original; for all I know, it’s what Mike linked to.
What I posted was positive encouragement to put up the useful version of what you posted. Apparently no good deed goes unsavaged.
I’m pretty sure the original, with the actual link to Google Earth and the properly color-coded routes, is this one by Andrew Griggs:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.onlyinyourstate.com/usa/abandoned-railroad-map-usa/amp/
I have the worried suspicion this runs better if you download the full Google Earth program, which was well over 6GB the last time I downloaded it… and that was a very long time ago as that program goes!
You can also get to the RailROWMap through Google My Maps (you will have to search using your browser as the link helpfully goes ahead and loads it in an app which I don’t know to paste an URL to…) which gives you the option to get the map on an iOS or Android portable device, perhaps highly useful in conjunction with GPS.
I spotted a few missing abandoned lines in my neighborhood.
I uploaded a .kml file to the site. I’ll check back and see if it has been added to the map.
If it was accepted I’ll continue to add more that I’m familiar with. There are quite a few missing from the NE Ohio area.
Regards, Ed
Sometimes the big Delorme Atlas/Gazetteer road maps show abandoned rail lines, and the Steam Powered Video railroad atlas books purport to show everything including current and abandoned, but not the very oldest abandoned I have found. Still, useful and interesting if doing a little railroad archeology out in the field, and the format is practical for consulting while exploring.
One resource that is expensive and cumbersome to take along on field trips is the various hard bound “A Railroad Atlas of the United States in 1946” by Richard C Carpenter, published by Johns Hopkins University. You need to get used to Carpenter’s rather quirky drawings but it is an amazing resource and I have tried to buy all the volumes that relate to states that I routinely go railfanning in: Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
Dave Nelson
as others have mentioned, it’s not clear what the site considers abandoned. at least in northern new jersey, there’s the abandoned Delaware and Lackawanna line that includes the Paulinskill Viaduct. Does abandoned mean trackage is still in place?
That’s what I wonder too. In the case of the C&WI trackage into Dearborn Station, all of the track has long ago been removed. Is that why it doesn’t appear as “abandoned”? Must the abandoned track still be in place?
Rich
Looking at map, I see both, areas where the track is long gone, and short sections that are still used.
For example, the MILW. from Sturdevant WI, to Elkhorn, WI. the tracks are long gone, and now a trail, but a short section of it remains in Burlington, that the CN uses.
Same with the TMEL&RR., track from Muskego to East Troy is gone, but the short 5 mile section from Mukwonago, WI. to East Troy, WI. remains in service.
I haven’t spent much time looking at different areas yet. There are many places I want to check out in the northern part of WI.
Mike.
There’s a relatively easy check here: both the DL&W ‘old road’ and the Lackawanna Cutoff can be traced back from between Buttzville and the Delaware; I believe that section of the Old Road had track until the late 1950s (the bridges were certainly there). Just west was a ‘pinch point’ where Rt.46 went under the BelDel; this was visible for a couple of years after Diane severed the line, but was amazingly ‘daylighted’ out thereafter as a road-improvement project, to the point it is difficult to determine a grade was ever there; the line appeared intact north of that point for years, I believe with track relatively intact, until road improvement projects similarly daylighted the bridges spanning the various roads to Hope, etc. You would now never know where those were, but if the map has abandonment ‘dates’ there are three to cross-compare, and a fourth if you count the L&NE or whatever it was that came off the BelDel right before the 46 crossing, waaaay down in a hole where you’d never expect it – I think that’s the track that CNJ then operated post-63 up to the point they ceased operations in Pennsylvania, and it was still maintained in fully operating condition at least into the 1990s although I don’t remember by whom…
I spent a lot of time looking at that ex MILW line. I drive over it in Kansassville when I head up to Hiawatha Hobbies. “RR Xing” paint and the stop lines are still in suprisingly good shape. Always cracks me up.
I’m actually moving to Burlington in 2 Months and will be very close to the line where CN still uses the tracks. The bridge on the opposite side is pretty cool too.
I had always wanted to see a database of the locations of roundhouses and turntables noted on maps as well. I know there is some data for stations and towers but so much is disappearing, and if redeveloped, there’s nothing left to indicate the locations.
These two are in my neck of Ohio, near Ashtabula:
Roundhouse_NYCS_Ashtabula by Edmund, on Flickr
Roundhouse_PRR_Ashtabula by Edmund, on Flickr
These two are along the New York Central, Chicago-Buffalo main line where the line to the Ashtabula ore and coal harbor branch crosses.
They’re only a few hundred yards from each other. I’ve come across many more, some I was aware of, some I discovered quite by accident. I know in the Cleveland area there were 29 roundhouses/turntables in the late 1930s. Only two remain that I know of.
Perhaps Andrew can make this a feature of his map website?
Regards, Ed
On Tues. and Thurs., you can catch the CN L504 that switches Nestles, the Lanmark mill, and the glass manufacturer.
Usually in the late mornings.
The map you linked to has way more info on abandoned lines in northern WI, than the site I linked to. [Y]
Mike.