🇺🇸 Country
Train routes in United States
62 routes · high-speed 2 · classic 20 · night train 9 · scenic 8 · heritage 14 · mountain 8 · luxury 1
62 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 (20)
- 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 ↗ - Silver Star
Amtrak’s daily New York–Miami run via the Carolinas and a loop through Tampa: the East Coast’s classic snowbird train down to the Florida sun.
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.
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Night train (9)
- 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.
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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 — 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 — 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 62 routes in United States in this atlas.
Are there night trains in United States?
Yes — 9 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 62 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 22 routes