Coastal Classic

Skirts the bore-tide flats of Turnagain Arm, then climbs past Spencer Glacier into country no road reaches.

The Coastal Classic leaves Anchorage at dawn and spends its first hour pinned between the Chugach peaks and the grey tidal flats of Turnagain Arm, where beluga whales chase the bore tide. At Portage it swings south into the Kenai Mountains, grinding up the Placer River valley past Spencer Glacier and over the Grandview summit through terrain no road has ever reached. The descent follows the Trail Lakes down to Seward, a fishing port ringed by the mountains of Kenai Fjords National Park.

Stations

1. 0 kmAnchorage
2. 63 kmGirdwood
3. 177 kmSeward

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

• Turnagain Arm bore tide
• Girdwood ski country
• Spencer Glacier
• Grandview summit
• Kenai Lake
• Resurrection Bay at Seward

How this line was checked

• Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 6824343 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 25 m of them
• Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 7 m from it
• The operator publishes this line's timetable: Alaska Railroad — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
• 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 Coastal Classic?

The Coastal Classic runs 183 km from Anchorage to Seward.

How long does the Coastal Classic take?

The fastest scheduled journey is 4 h 35 min for the 183 km. That is an average of 40 km/h end to end. The line's top service speed is 95 km/h.

Who runs the Coastal Classic?

Alaska Railroad, with GoldStar dome & Adventure Class cars.

How old is the Coastal Classic?

The line has been in service since 1923. 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 Coastal Classic run?

Daily mid-May–mid-Sep.

View on the world railway map →

Read more on Wikipedia ↗