Acela

America’s fastest train works the dense Northeast Corridor: 240 km/h bursts between five major downtowns.

The Avelia Liberty sets, in service since August 2025, tilt through the curves of a corridor first engineered in the nineteenth century: which is precisely the Acela’s charm and its constraint. Its fastest running comes along the New England shore, where the train outruns beach traffic within sight of Long Island Sound. It is less a train ride than a rolling boardroom, the only true high-speed railroading in the Americas, linking the capitals of finance and government.

Stations

1. 0 kmBoston South Station
2. 2 kmBoston Back Bay
3. 19 kmRoute 128
4. 70 kmProvidence
5. 113 kmKingston
6. 140 kmWesterly
7. Show 9 more stations

   1. 170 kmNew London
   2. 198 kmOld Saybrook
   3. 251 kmNew Haven Union Station
   4. 314 kmStamford
   5. 371 kmNew York Penn Station
   6. 388 kmNewark Penn Station
   7. 411 kmMetropark
   8. 465 kmTrenton
   9. 517 kmPhiladelphia 30th Street Station
8. 558 kmWilmington
9. 668 kmBaltimore Penn Station
10. 685 kmBWI Thurgood Marshall Airport
11. 718 kmNew Carrollton
12. 732 kmWashington Union Station

The stations OpenStreetMap lists for this service, in order, with the distance along the line as drawn here. A train may skip some of them.

Along the way

• Boston Back Bay start
• Providence and the Mystic shoreline
• Hell Gate Bridge into Manhattan
• 30th Street Station’s columned hall
• Susquehanna River crossing
• Capitol dome on arrival

How this line was checked

• Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 4799100 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 31 m of them
• Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 8 m from it
• Checked against the running timetable via Amtrak: our line sits under 100 m from the shape of the Acela to Boston
• Wikipedia has an article for this line
• See for yourself: open this line on the map with OpenStreetMap's own railway drawn underneath it

Questions and answers

How long is the Acela?

The Acela runs 735 km from Boston to Washington, D.C.

How long does the Acela take?

The fastest scheduled journey is 6 h 42 min for the 735 km. That is an average of 110 km/h end to end. The line's top service speed is 257 km/h.

Who runs the Acela?

Amtrak, with Avelia Liberty.

How old is the Acela?

The line has been in service since 2000. That is the year the atlas dates it from: for a modern brand running over an older railway, it is the railway's date, not the brand's.

How often does the Acela run?

Roughly hourly weekdays; reduced weekends.

View on the world railway map →

Read more on Wikipedia ↗