Google Maps which I normally use for planning trips etc seems to be removing railroads from their maps. Anyone know of another source of maps online that shows rail lines as well? It is getting harder to plan a route when I want to follow a line I’m not familiar with.
Thanks!
USGS maps or FRA’s mapping application from the crossing safety website.
(GOOGLE and Bing’s Railroad GIS has always been lacking - nothing new. They bought into the fable that railroads are a dying industry long ago and never snapped out of it. When they do identify a line, it’s either wrong or two railroad names in the past.)
I like to use Acme Mapper - which uses Google for its satellite images. As I mentioned in another thread, though, you can toggle over to the topo (USGS) maps and back.
But the topo maps are often several railroads behind, and when tracing a given railroad line, you may see three different railroads attributed to the same line. Nice for railroad archeology, not so great for figuring out who’s currently running a given line - especially if it’s now a shortline.
Because you can toggle back to the satellite map, though, you can easily see if there are even tracks on the ground at a given location.
Thank you, that was very helpful. I especially like Acme Mapper.
I’m hooked on Google maps (maps.google.com), and they have tracks as always. It is uncertain what you have observed. Below is the east end of West Colton Yard, most closely associated with Colton, CA. Map and satellite aerial views work fine and show tracks.