Coast Starlight

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.

Stations

1. 0 kmSeattle King Street +2
2. 64 kmTacoma Dome +1
3. 107 kmOlympia-Lacey +1
4. 142 kmCentralia +1
5. 212 kmKelso +1
6. 274 kmVancouver +2
7. Show 19 more stations

   1. 290 kmPortland Union Station +2
   2. 375 kmSalem +1
   3. 419 kmAlbany +1
   4. 489 kmEugene +1
   5. 681 kmChemult
   6. 798 kmKlamath Falls
   7. 965 kmDunsmuir
   8. 1,053 kmRedding
   9. 1,172 kmChico
   10. 1,308 kmSacramento Valley Station +2
   11. 1,330 kmDavis +2
   12. 1,401 kmMartinez +3
   13. 1,444 kmEmeryville +3
   14. 1,452 kmOakland-Jack London Square +2
   15. 1,516 kmSan Jose/Diridon +1
   16. 1,624 kmSalinas
   17. 1,782 kmPaso Robles
   18. 1,838 kmSan Luis Obispo +1
   19. 2,028 kmSanta Barbara +1
8. 2,087 kmOxnard +1
9. 2,136 kmSimi Valley +1
10. 2,163 kmVan Nuys +1
11. 2,172 kmBurbank Airport–South +1
12. 2,194 kmLos Angeles Union Station +3

The stations OpenStreetMap lists for a train that runs this route end to end, in order, with the distance along the line as drawn here. A train may skip some of them. A +N after a station: N other routes on this map stop or end there, and the map draws it as a station where lines meet.

Along the way

• Puget Sound shoreline
• Willamette Valley farmland
• Cascade crossing above Odell Lake
• Mount Shasta from Grass Lake at 1,543 m
• Sacramento River canyon
• Vandenberg surf coast

How this line was checked

• The 489 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 10945394 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within under 25 m of them
• Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 3 m from it
• Checked against the running timetable via Amtrak: our line sits under 100 m from the shape of the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles
• 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

Read more on Wikipedia ↗