Scenic route
Coast Starlight
Seattle → Los Angeles · United States
Coast Starlight in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 2,216 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 35 h
- Average speed
- 63 km/h
- Top speed
- 127 km/h
- Operator
- Amtrak
- Train
- Amtrak Superliner
- Countries
- United States
- In service since
- 1971
- Runs
- 1× daily each way
- Highest point
- 1,543 m
- Riders per year
- ≈ 400k
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Cascade volcanoes, Bay fog and a hundred miles of Pacific surf from the parlour car’s armchairs.
Stitched together from the Southern Pacific’s Coast Daylight and Cascade routes when Amtrak began in 1971, it remains the network’s most complete scenery sampler. The rails skirt Puget Sound, cross the Willamette Valley, then climb to the trip’s 1,543 m summit at Grass Lake beneath Mount Shasta before spiralling down the Sacramento River canyon. South of San Luis Obispo comes the finale: a long shoreline sweep past Vandenberg where no public road reaches the track.
How this line was checked
- The 488 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 11845490 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 85.2% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 22 m); the longest stretch away from it is 18 km
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Amtrak schedules — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Puget Sound shoreline
- Willamette Valley farmland
- Cascade crossing above Odell Lake
- Mount Shasta from Grass Lake — 1,543 m
- Sacramento River canyon
- Vandenberg surf coast
More scenic routes
- Glacier Express
“The world’s slowest express”: 291 bridges, 91 tunnels and the 2,033 m Oberalp Pass at an average of 36 km/h.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bernina Express
A UNESCO World Heritage railway: 7 % grades with no rack, the Brusio spiral, and the highest rail crossing of the Alps at 2,253 m.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bergensbanen
Northern Europe’s highest main line: over the bare Hardangervidda plateau at 1,237 m, through 182 tunnels.
Wikipedia ↗ - West Highland Line
Regularly voted the world’s most scenic railway: around Rannoch Moor and over the 21-arch Glenfinnan Viaduct of film fame.
Wikipedia ↗
More train routes in United States.