North America by rail

[petrea_mitchell]

While perusing the maps at UrbanRail.Net, I thought of a fun (to me) exercise: If you were going to travel around North America by rail only, how many of those city rail systems would you be able to get to? ("North America" here means "US and Canada", since Mexico has only just started rebuilding its passenger rail system.)

The connection between long-distance and local rail wouldn't have to be in the same building, but it would need to be reasonably close, since the long-distance traveller will probably have non-negligible luggage.

Cities that didn't make the cut were a mix of too far to walk, no long-distance rail service at all, and systems that haven't even started getting built yet.

And the list is:

• Baltimore
• Boston
• Buffalo
• Chicago
• Cleveland
• Dallas
• Denver
• Detroit
• Kansas City
• Los Angeles
• Memphis
• Miami (not from its Amtrak station, but via SunRail, which has stops in common with Amtrak)
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis
• Montreal
• Newark
• New Orleans
• New York City
• Norfolk
• Oklahoma City
• Ottawa
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Portland, OR
• Salt Lake City
• San Diego
• San Francisco (not served by Amtrak trains, but can be reached via Caltrain from San Jose)
• Santa Ana (starting in 2025)
• San Jose
• Sacramento
• St. Louis
• Seattle
• Tacoma
• Tucson
• Toronto
• Vancouver, BC
• Washington, DC

Comments

[delosharriman]

I will note that the Amtrak station in Fort Worth is also served by the only two rail transit services here, TexRail (which goes to the airport, but makes some intermediate stops) and Trinity Railway Express (which goes to Dallas, again making intermediate stops). TexRail is operated with LRV-like RDCs, and TRE with "heavy rail" equipment, Diesel locomotives and lozenge coaches.

[petrea_mitchell]

Ah, you've anticipated my next post...