USA Railroads is a comprehensive database of the nation's railway system at 1:24,000 to 1:100,000 scale. The data set covers all 50 States plus the District of Columbia.This hosted feature service displays at scales up to 1:1,500,000.

Network of Texas Railroads pulled from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) North American Rail Network (NARN) Rail Lines publicly available data. The data was clipped to the Texas State Boundary and queried to a records subset based on "current status or condition of rail line" as populated in the "NET" attribute. Additional fields were added and populated to adhere to TxDOT requirements and purposes.Update Frequency: 1 MonthsSource: Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)Security Level: PublicOwned by TxDOT: FalseRelated LinksFRA NARN Source DataTexas Railroads (Deprecated)Data Dictionary PDF [Generated 2025/04/29]

The North American Rail Network (NARN) Rail Lines: Class I Freight Railroads View dataset is from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)/Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). This dataset is a subset of the NARN Rail Lines dataset that show the ownership and trackage rights for all the Class I freight railroads: “Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF),†"Canadian National (CN) Railway," "Canadian Pacific (CP) Railway," "CSX Transportation," "Norfolk Southern (NS) Railway," "Kansas City Southern (KCS) Railway," and "Union Pacific (UP)". It is derived from the North American Rail Network (NARN) Lines dataset, and for more information please consult, https://doi.org/10.21949/1519415. The NARN Rail Lines dataset is a database that provides ownership, trackage rights, type, passenger, STRACNET, and geographic reference for North America's railway system at 1:24,000 or better within the United States. The data set covers all 50 States, the District of Columbia, Mexico, and Canada. A data dictionary, or other source of attribute information, is accessible at https://doi.org/10.21949/1528950

In the 1800s, the spread of railroads enabled the growth and spread of the United States. Although slow by today’s standards, trains traveled more quickly than other forms of transportation available at the time. By train, it took roughly four days to reach San Francisco from Omaha, Nebraska. By contrast, it had taken covered wagons four to six months, and stagecoaches around a month. In addition to travel, railroads facilitated trade and economic growth. Prior to railroads, people relied on a system of roads and canals for transportation of goods and crops. But this system could be unreliable depending on road conditions, the weather, and many other factors. Trains brought products made in the factories of the East and Midwest to the rest of the country and carried farm produce and livestock to urban markets. The first railroad charter was granted to John Stevens in 1815, and several railroads were in service by 1830. Early rail development was haphazard, financed by individual investors and built without government oversight. Rail gauges, or the distance between rails, could be different depending on the company. This caused a lot of problems for connecting railroads, because only trains designed for that gauge could use those sections of track. Despite miles of track being built, people were generally still skeptical about the usefulness of railroads. In 1843, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts proved to Americans that trains could transport crops and other goods long distances at low costs. By 1861, there were 35,400 kilometers (22,000 miles) of track in the North and only 15,300 kilometers (9,500 miles) in the South. Troops and supplies could be transported quickly using trains. Many battles, like the Battle of Bull Run, were fought over control of Southern railway depots, and tracks were used to move both Confederate and Union soldiers to battles. After the Civil War, railway construction increased significantly. In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act with the goal of building a transcontinental railroad. The first, built by the Central Pacific Railroad Company in the West and the Union Pacific in the Midwest, was completed in 1869. Following roughly the route previously taken by the Pony Express and the California Trail, the route was called the Overland Route. Construction was dangerous, as rail crews had to cross mountains, rivers, and other difficult terrain. For this work, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific relied mainly on immigrant labor, recruiting Chinese immigrants in the West and Irish immigrants in the Midwest. Formerly enslaved people and Mormons were also part of these crews. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Chinese workers completed an estimated 90 percent of work on the Central Pacific’s portion of track, facing racism, violence, and discrimination. Chinese workers were often paid less than white workers and were given the most undesirable and dangerous jobs. The Overland Route was one of the first land-grant railroads. To fund construction of such a long and expensive project, the U.S. government gave railroad companies millions of acres of land that they could sell for profit. Following this model, many more railroads were built, including four additional transcontinental railroads. These new railroads took southern and northern routes across the country. In addition to connecting existing cities on the West Coast to the rest of the country, the railroads also influenced where people settled. Trains made multiple stops to refuel, make repairs, and take on more food and water. In return, towns grew around these stops. More than 7,000 cities and towns west of the Missouri River started as Union Pacific depots and water stops. In 1890, the U.S. Bureau of the Census announced that the “Frontier was closed.” The railroads had played a large role in that milestone. This dataset was researched and built by Dr. Jeremy Atack, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University. His procedure and sources, as well as downloadable files, are documented here.

Line file representing railroad lines in Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana.Data projection: NAD 1983 StatePlane Indiana East FIPS 1301 (US Feet)

Connecticut Railroads is a 1:24,000-scale, feature-based layer that includes railroad features on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle maps for the State of Connecticut. This layer only includes features located in Connecticut. The layer is based on information from USGS topographic quadrangle maps published between 1969 and 1984 and does not represent the railroad system in Connecticut at any one particular point in time. The layer does not depict current conditions and excludes many railroads that have been built, modified, or removed since the time these topographic quadrangle maps were published. The layer includes railroad tracks, bridges, drawbridges, roundhouses, sidings, tracks, tunnels, underpasses, and stations. It does not include train schedule or track related information. Features are linear and represent railroad track centerlines. Attribute information is comprised of codes to cartographically represent (symbolize) rail features on a map. This layer was originally published in 1994. The 2005 edition includes the same rail features published in 1994, but the attribute information has been slightly modified and made easier to use.

FRA Grade Crossings is a spatial file that originates from the National Highway-Rail Crossing, Inventory Program. The program is to provide information to Federal, State, and local governments, as well as the railroad industry for the improvements of safety at highway-rail crossing.

© Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) This layer is sourced from maps.bts.dot.gov.

This dataset contains point features that represent Railroad Crossings in Central Ohio. Each highway-rail or pathway crossing is assigned a unique alphanumeric seven digit identifier by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) as a part of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008. This unique identifier is stored in a national database that can be used to quickly retrieve information about the physical and operating characteristics of both public and private crossings. In addition, this information can be used by Emergency Personnel to quickly and accurately locate calls for service. This unique identifier is commonly referred to as a "Railroad Crossing ID" or "FRA Number". Each Railroad Crossing must have this number posted on a metal plate at each crossing. Many crossings have a sign that includes the name of the railroad and an emergency contact telephone number in addition to the Railroad Crossing ID.This information can be retrieved remotely from the Federal Railroad Administration, Office of Safety Analysis' website at: http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/OfficeofSafety/PublicSite/Crossing/Crossing.aspx

Analysis of ‘Connecticut Railroads’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/0f9f883e-31c1-4eec-b4fe-55ed78f90b18 on 27 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

Connecticut Railroads is a 1:24,000-scale, feature-based layer that includes railroad features on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle maps for the State of Connecticut. This layer only includes features located in Connecticut. The layer is based on information from USGS topographic quadrangle maps published between 1969 and 1984 and does not represent the railroad system in Connecticut at any one particular point in time. The layer does not depict current conditions and excludes many railroads that have been built, modified, or removed since the time these topographic quadrangle maps were published. The layer includes railroad tracks, bridges, drawbridges, roundhouses, sidings, tracks, tunnels, underpasses, and stations. It does not include train schedule or track related information. Features are linear and represent railroad track centerlines. Attribute information is comprised of codes to cartographically represent (symbolize) rail features on a map. This layer was originally published in 1994. The 2005 edition includes the same rail features published in 1994, but the attribute information has been slightly modified and made easier to use.

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

This layer is sourced from maps.ci.sherman.tx.us.

Contained within the 2nd Edition (1915) of the Atlas of Canada is a map that shows the areas that rail companies operated in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, circa 1913. The six railway lines displayed are the Canadian Government, Canadian Pacific, Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk, National Transcontinental and Great Northern (U.S.). The railway networks are indicated, and the territory tributary to each line is shown in colours. The map includes statistics of the mileage, rolling stock, receipts, cost of construction and the cost of maintenance of the various railway lines for 1913 to 1914. Some mileage data is as of 1913. The table also gives the Canadian total for these statistics as of June 30, 1913. The map displays the railway systems running across the border and into part of the U.S., but they do not own or control the Canadian railways. The map displays the rectangular survey system which records the land that is available to the public. This grid like system is divided into sections, townships, range, and meridian from mid-Manitoba to Alberta.

This layer is a component of Railroads in Fort Bend County.

Railroads in Fort Bend County

© FBC GIS

Contained within the 3rd Edition (1957) of the Atlas of Canada is a map that shows three condensed maps of Canadian railway traffic circa 1954. Net tons per mile of road operated are indicated. 'Net tons per mile of road operated' is to be understood as meaning that, in 1954, the total net freight passing any point on a given line was of the tonnage indicated by the flow line at that point. In a few areas on the maps, traffic carried by lines closely paralleling each other and providing duplicate service between the same points is indicated by one pair of flow lines only. The flow data is broken down to show flow direction (either east and south or west and north). Data for freight carried by Canadian railways in the United States of America were not available.

Tunnels in the United States According to the HSIP Tiger Team Report, a tunnel is defined as a linear underground passageway open at both ends. This dataset is based on the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory (NBI). Records in the NBI that are attributed as "Tunnels" were extracted by TGS and were located using a combination of ortho imagery, topographic DRGs, NAVTEQ streets, and NAVTEQ railroads. Two points were captured for each tunnel, one at each tunnel opening. A line was then created either by tracing the NAVTEQ street / railroad, or, if there was not a NAVTEQ street / railroad coincident with the tunnel, then by a straight line joining the two points. For some tunnels, the NBI contains two records, one for the road through the tunnel and one for the road on top of the tunnel (if any). In these cases, both have been captured in this dataset. Features in this dataset that are over tunnels have a [RECTYPE] of "1", while features that are in tunnels have a [RECTYPE] of "2". Presumably, this was done because both roads could be blocked if the tunnel was destroyed. In some cases, the NBI only represented a tunnel with a record of type = "1" (over). In these cases, the following rules were applied: 1) If there was no road running through the tunnel, the road on top of the tunnel was captured. For example, if a mine conveyor runs through the tunnel and a county highway runs on top of the tunnel, the county highway was captured. 2) If a road ran through the tunnel, then this road was captured and the [RECTYPE] was changed to "2". The "feature carried" and "feature intersected" fields were also changed to be consistent with the feature actually captured. According to the U.S. DOT: "Our reporting requirements do not extend to tunnels, therefore, any info we have should be considered incomplete."

© U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory This layer is a component of Road and Rail Tunnels.

This is a subset of the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory that depicts tunnels associated with roads and rail lines.

© U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory

This dataset includes public (common carrier) tariff rates for fertilizer shipments on 26 major rail corridors. Fertilizer commodities include potash, urea, urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), monoammonium phosphate (MAP), and diammonium phosphate (DAP). The dataset provides tariff rates and fuel surcharges for two car ownership types (privately-owned and railroad-owned railcars) and three train types (manifest, unit, and shuttle).