Train routes in United States
67 routes · high-speed 2 · classic 23 · night train 11 · scenic 8 · heritage 14 · mountain 8 · luxury 1
67 routes cross United States in the World Train Map atlas. The longest is the California Zephyr at 3,924 km; the fastest is the Acela, running up to 257 km/h; the oldest line dates to 1832. Every route links to its facts, photo and story, and to the interactive world map.
Open the world railway map →See the USA train map: all Amtrak & scenic routes on one map.
High-speed (2)
- Acela
America’s fastest train works the dense Northeast Corridor: 240 km/h bursts between five major downtowns.
Wikipedia ↗ - Brightline
America’s first private intercity railway in a century: bright yellow, 200 km/h through the palms.
Wikipedia ↗
Classic (23)
- Southwest Chief
Heir to the Santa Fe Super Chief, “Train of the Stars”: crests 2,388 m Raton Pass on the old Santa Fe Trail.
Wikipedia ↗ - Sunset Limited
America’s oldest train name, running since 1894: crosses the Pecos River High Bridge and the Chihuahuan Desert three times a week.
Wikipedia ↗ - Amtrak Cascades
Salish Sea beaches, Puget Sound ferries and Willamette farmland: the Pacific Northwest’s green corridor train, re-equipping with new Airo sets in 2026.
Wikipedia ↗ - Adirondack
Hudson castles, Lake Champlain narrows and border-country vineyards: widely called the most scenic day train in the eastern United States.
Wikipedia ↗ - Northeast Regional
Amtrak’s busiest train, over 12 million riders a year, racing the electrified Northeast Corridor at up to 125 mph without the Acela fare.
Wikipedia ↗ - Vermonter
One of Amtrak’s longest daytime runs; trains reverse at Springfield to swing up the Connecticut River valley into Vermont’s Green Mountains.
Wikipedia ↗ - Downeaster
Maine’s state-run link passed 10 million riders in December 2024, serving coastal Old Orchard Beach and the outlet town of Freeport.
Wikipedia ↗ - Ethan Allen Express
In July 2022 it became the first passenger train to reach Burlington in 69 years, extending north from Rutland along Lake Champlain.
Wikipedia ↗ - Maple Leaf
The only Amtrak–VIA joint train: passengers clear customs at Niagara Falls, where the line crosses the gorge beside the thundering cataract.
Wikipedia ↗ - Pennsylvanian
Sweeps around Horseshoe Curve near Altoona: the 1854 engineering landmark that finally tamed the Allegheny grade.
Wikipedia ↗ - Piedmont
North Carolina’s home-grown corridor: the state owns the trains, a fleet of rebuilt 1960s streamliner cars, running four round trips a day.
Wikipedia ↗ - Heartland Flyer
Oklahoma’s only Amtrak train and the sole daily rail link into Texas, timed at Fort Worth to meet the Chicago–LA Texas Eagle.
Wikipedia ↗ - Carolinian
At 704 miles the longest state-supported route in the Amtrak system, swapping its electric locomotive for a diesel at Washington.
Wikipedia ↗ - Wolverine
Hits 110 mph on state-owned track between Kalamazoo and Dearborn: one of the few 100-mph corridors outside the Northeast.
Wikipedia ↗ - Hiawatha
The Midwest’s busiest corridor: seven round trips a day linking downtown Chicago and Milwaukee in about 90 minutes.
Wikipedia ↗ - San Joaquins
A Central Valley workhorse whose Thruway buses fan out to Yosemite, LA and the coast; over half of riders connect to a bus.
Wikipedia ↗ - Capitol Corridor
Amtrak’s fourth-busiest route, along San Pablo Bay from Silicon Valley to the Sierra foothills; one daily train runs the full climb to Auburn.
Wikipedia ↗ - Borealis
Amtrak’s May 2024 daytime run up the Mississippi from Chicago through Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s river bluffs to the Twin Cities.
Wikipedia ↗ - Missouri River Runner
Twice a day along the wide Missouri: Hermann’s German wine town, the capitol at Jefferson City and ragtime Sedalia between the two big cities.
Wikipedia ↗ - Mardi Gras Service
The Gulf Coast’s first passenger trains since Hurricane Katrina: from August 2025 two a day have run from New Orleans along the Mississippi shore through Bay St. Louis, Gulfport and Biloxi to Mobile.
Wikipedia ↗ - Illinois Zephyr & Carl Sandburg
America’s longest continuously running state-sponsored train: the Illinois Zephyr has run since November 1971, joined by the Carl Sandburg in 2006, across the prairie to Quincy on the Mississippi.
Wikipedia ↗ - Northeast Regional (Roanoke)
From Boston down the whole Northeast Corridor, then past Washington by Charlottesville and Lynchburg to Roanoke, where the Northeast Regional, paid for by Virginia, brought trains back in 2017.
Wikipedia ↗ - Pere Marquette
Amtrak’s Michigan train from Grand Rapids by Holland and Bangor to St. Joseph on Lake Michigan, then round the south of the lake to Chicago; named after the Pere Marquette Railway’s trains, it has run since 1984.
Wikipedia ↗
Night train (11)
- Empire Builder
Two nights tracing the Great Northern’s empire: skirting Glacier National Park along the Montana Rockies.
Wikipedia ↗ - City of New Orleans
Immortalized in Steve Goodman’s 1971 song: overnight down the Mississippi Delta past Memphis, Yazoo City and the Louisiana bayous.
Wikipedia ↗ - Auto Train
Cars and motorcycles ride in autoracks behind the sleepers: often the world’s longest passenger train, nonstop Virginia to Florida.
Wikipedia ↗ - Crescent
Heir to the 1925 Crescent Limited. Manhattan to the French Quarter past Blue Ridge foothills, midnight Atlanta and a dawn crawl across Lake Pontchartrain.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cardinal
Amtrak’s slowest way to Chicago and its prettiest: tri-weekly through Virginia horse country and the whitewater canyons of the New River Gorge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lake Shore Limited
Heir to the New York Central’s 1897 Water Level Route: up the Hudson at dusk, along Lake Erie by night, into Chicago with morning coffee.
Wikipedia ↗ - Silver Meteor
The Seaboard streamliner that opened Florida’s diesel age in 1939: 28 hours from Penn Station to palm-lined Miami, still running nightly.
Wikipedia ↗ - Texas Eagle
A Missouri Pacific name kept alive from the Loop to the Alamo: with through sleepers to Los Angeles, one of the longest runs on the Amtrak map.
Wikipedia ↗ - Floridian
Born of a 2024 tunnel-works merger of two classic trains: one seat from Lake Michigan over the Alleghenies to Tampa and Miami, nearly two days aboard.
Wikipedia ↗ - Empire Builder (Portland section)
The Empire Builder’s Portland half: it leaves the Seattle cars at Spokane in the night and follows the Columbia River from Pasco down its gorge to Portland, a section Amtrak brought back in 1981.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lake Shore Limited (Boston section)
The Lake Shore Limited’s Boston cars, split from the New York train at Albany–Rensselaer, cross the Berkshires by Pittsfield and Springfield on the old Boston and Albany; first run in 1975.
Wikipedia ↗
Scenic (8)
- California Zephyr
Two nights, seven states: through the Rockies’ canyons and over Donner Pass, widely called America’s most beautiful train ride.
Wikipedia ↗ - Coast Starlight
Cascade volcanoes, Bay fog and a hundred miles of Pacific surf from the parlour car’s armchairs.
Wikipedia ↗ - Denali Star
Twelve hours of wilderness with Denali filling the dome windows, flag stops still serve trailside cabins.
Wikipedia ↗ - Pacific Surfliner
Heir to the 1938 San Diegan: surfboards ride free as double-deckers skim the sand at Del Mar and San Clemente.
Wikipedia ↗ - Coastal Classic
Skirts the bore-tide flats of Turnagain Arm, then climbs past Spencer Glacier into country no road reaches.
Wikipedia ↗ - Winter Park Express
Amtrak’s revived ski train climbs more than 1,100 m through 28 tunnels and spills skiers out steps from Winter Park’s lifts.
Wikipedia ↗ - Canyon Spirit
Three dome-car days Denver to Salt Lake City: the Continental Divide inside the 10 km Moffat Tunnel, the Colorado River through canyons no road enters, Moab’s red rock, then Castle Gate and Soldier Summit.
- Aurora Winter Train
The winter run north across frozen Alaska flag-stops for bush residents between Anchorage and Fairbanks, often with the northern lights overhead.
Wikipedia ↗
Heritage (14)
- Durango & Silverton
1882 gold-rush narrow gauge: steam-hauled ever since, on the Highline ledge blasted 120 m above the Animas River gorge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Grand Canyon Railway
Since 1901 the painless way to the South Rim: vintage Pullmans roll across pine forest and high prairie to a log depot steps from the abyss.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad
America’s highest steam railroad, 1880 Rio Grande narrow gauge. K-36 Mikados storm 3,054 m Cumbres Pass and teeter along the Toltec Gorge rim.
Wikipedia ↗ - White Pass & Yukon Route
Blasted through gold-rush cliffs in 26 months (1898–1900): 900 m of climbing out of Skagway on cantilever bridges, then along Lake Bennett to the Yukon.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cass Scenic Railroad
Home to the world’s largest fleet of geared Shay steam locomotives, grinding up 11% grades to Bald Knob, 4,842 ft. West Virginia’s third-highest point.
Wikipedia ↗ - Verde Canyon Railroad
Two 1953 FP7 diesels, once Alaska Railroad engines, thread a 680-ft curved tunnel and a red-rock canyon that shelters nesting bald eagles.
Wikipedia ↗ - Great Smoky Mountains Railroad
The spectacular train-wreck scene in The Fugitive (1993) was staged on this line; the wrecked locomotive still sits trackside near Dillsboro.
Wikipedia ↗ - Georgetown Loop Railroad
To gain 640 ft between two towns just 2 miles apart, the narrow gauge spirals over itself on the Devil’s Gate High Bridge, an 1884 marvel rebuilt in 1984.
Wikipedia ↗ - Skunk Train
Nicknamed the “Skunk” in 1925 for its reeking gas railcars, you smelled it before you saw it, still winding out of Fort Bragg through the coast redwoods.
Wikipedia ↗ - Mount Hood Railroad
Climbs the orchard-filled Hood River valley toward 11,240-ft Mount Hood, reversing up one of just five railroad switchbacks still in regular US use.
Wikipedia ↗ - Strasburg Rail Road
Chartered in 1832, America’s oldest continuously operating railroad still steams through Lancaster County’s Amish farmland.
Wikipedia ↗ - Mountaineer
Follows the 1875 Maine Central grade up Crawford Notch, creeping across the curved Frankenstein Trestle high above the Saco.
- Royal Gorge Route
Rides the canyon won in the 1879 “Royal Gorge War”, the Arkansas River alongside and a suspension bridge 291 m overhead.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nevada Northern Railway
America’s best-preserved steam-era short line: the “Ghost Train of Old Ely” still runs its 1910 locomotives out of a National Historic Landmark copper yard.
Wikipedia ↗
Mountain (8)
- Mount Washington Cog Railway
The world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway (1869): still shoving trains up a 37% grade to New England’s stormiest, windiest summit.
Wikipedia ↗ - Pikes Peak Cog Railway
North America’s highest railway has climbed to the 4,302 m summit that inspired “America the Beautiful” since 1891; Swiss railcars took over the grade in 2021.
Wikipedia ↗ - Johnstown Inclined Plane
Built after the 1889 flood so Johnstown could flee uphill: one of the world’s steepest vehicular inclines, still hauling cars up Yoder Hill.
Wikipedia ↗ - Monongahela Incline
Opened 1870, the oldest continuously operating funicular in the United States, and still a fare-integrated everyday transit link up Mount Washington.
Wikipedia ↗ - Duquesne Incline
Original 1877 wooden Brill cars still climb the 30-degree grade to Grandview Avenue and Pittsburgh’s postcard skyline overlook.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lookout Mountain Incline Railway
’America’s Most Amazing Mile’ since 1895: the 72.7% grade near the summit ranks among the steepest on any passenger railway.
Wikipedia ↗ - Angels Flight
Billed the world’s shortest incorporated railway since 1901, the 91 m Bunker Hill hop costs $1.50 and starred in film noir and La La Land.
Wikipedia ↗ - Fenelon Place Elevator
Built in 1882 so banker J.K. Graves could ride the bluff home for lunch, and billed as the world’s shortest, steepest scenic railway.
Wikipedia ↗
Luxury (1)
- Napa Valley Wine Train
Guests wine and dine in restored early-1900s Pullman lounge cars behind vintage 1950s Alco diesels, rolling past Napa vineyards at a tasting pace.
Wikipedia ↗
Photos via Wikimedia Commons; each route page credits the author & licence
What is the fastest train in United States?
The Acela, running Boston to Washington, D.C. at up to 257 km/h. It is one of 67 routes in United States in this atlas.
Are there night trains in United States?
Yes, 11 sleeper services in this atlas serve United States: Empire Builder (Chicago – Seattle), City of New Orleans (Chicago – New Orleans), Auto Train (Lorton – Sanford), Crescent (New York – New Orleans), and others.
Can you cross the border by train from United States?
Yes, 4 of its 67 routes continue into another country: Amtrak Cascades (Vancouver – Eugene), Adirondack (New York – Montréal), White Pass & Yukon Route (Skagway – Carcross), Maple Leaf (New York – Toronto).
Which is the most scenic railway in United States?
United States has 16 scenic or mountain lines in this atlas. The longest is the California Zephyr, 3,924 km.
Cross-border lines continue into
Train routes in Canada 24 routes