Amtrak

Amtrak® (officially "National Railroad Passenger Corporation") operates a nationwide rail network of intercity passenger trains in the contiguous United States, serving over 500 destinations in 46 states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian provinces on over 21,400 route miles: most of the USA's passenger=regional (medium-distance: intrastate or interstate) trains and all passenger=national (long distance, interstate), overnight, highspeed=* and passenger=international trains. Many states (California, Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, Illinois, Utah, New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida...) and regional transportation authorities (e.g. Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District) sponsor their own state/regional commuter and intrastate route=trains, some affiliate with Amtrak (California), some do not (Maryland). Try an OpenPublicTransportMap rendering, which displays route=train relations as train-numbered lines, including the union of Amtrak routes with state- and regional-sponsored routes: most are on Class 4 track (maximum speed 80 MPH). While Acela, on Class 5, 6, 7 or 8 track (90, 110, 125, 160 MPH, respectively) is the only high-speed route which may reach 150 MPH (241 km/h), nearly half of Amtrak trains operate at top speeds of 100 MPH (161 km/h) or greater. In the Passenger column, bold type indicates "higher-speed" service, which include Class 5 (90 MPH) or Class 6 (110 MPH) track.

In North America, "bottom level" (infrastructure) route=tracks relations are omitted, instead skipping to "middle level" (infrastructure) route=railway relations. "Higher level" passenger rail routes like the Amtrak route relations linked here are properly a collection of rail segments, stations/stops and platforms. More complete tagging on underlying infrastructure (track) segments (making up a "named Subdivision") includes accurate, contiguous railway=* elements, with identical name=* and usage=* tags. These are collected into middle level route=railway relations, not bottom level route=tracks relations as OpenRailwayMap suggests. You can improve one or more of the higher level route=train relations below without the following suggestion, but please endeavor to create/review/correct/complete underlying middle level route=railway relations (infrastructure which should contain contiguous, identically named track segments) as you do so.

For example, the Hiawatha Service route=train relation contains all track segments that make up that route, so it is correct to mark here as Complete. But examining this relation's members shows that while some tracks are correctly named "C&M Subdivision," others are missing such name=* (and usage=*) tags. Furthermore, track segments which make up the C&M Subdivision are not (yet) collected into a middle level route=railway + name=C&M Subdivision relation. Please endeavor to identify contiguous rail segments with identical name=* and usage=* tags and collect them into a middle level route=railway "named Subdivision" relation. The higher level route=train relations listed below are important to complete, but so are their underlying middle level infrastructure route=railway relations, too!

Try OpenPublicTransportMap (OPTM): it displays passenger rail in route=train relations. At closer zooms, OPTM also displays route=light_rail, route=subway, route=tram, route=monorail, route=funicular, route=bus, route=trolleybus, route=aerialway and route=ferry with colors similar to OpenRailwayMap (ORM). Please compare and contrast ORM (rail infrastructure) and OPTM (passenger routes) with OSM's Transport layer which rather simply displays "any and all rail" (railway=*), though not disused or abandoned rail, and at closer zooms, route=bus. (Another rail renderer displayed rail-based passenger routes with their colour=* or color=* tag, but is no longer functional).

Amtrak route=train routes are complete to public_transport:version=2 as of 2021-01-16. A convention of right-hand main is assumed, and actual track and platform assignments may differ from what is mapped. Map Your Train Ride! Do you ride a train regularly or work at a train station? If you're sure that a train consistently serves a platform different from what is mapped, feel free to reroute the route=train relation and add the matching public_transport=stop_positions and public_transport=platforms. Alternatively, leave a note on the map or on this page, and someone will help you out.

Even-numbered Amtrak trains generally travel north and east, odd-numbered south and west. Among the exceptions are Pacific Surfliner trains, which use the opposite numbering system inherited from Santa Fe Railway, and some Downeaster and Empire Service trains. All routes are network=Amtrak, except in cases where service is provided jointly by Amtrak and another operator, such as the Maple Leaf train (operated by Canada's VIA Rail west of Niagara Falls), and the Hartford Line (along which Amtrak and ConnDOT coordinate service).

About the (branding, livery) colors in the passenger=* column

Mapzen made a rail renderer, transit-colours, that displayed passenger route=trains with their colour=* (or color=*) tag value (and at closer zooms, route=subway, route=light_rail, route=tram). Although Amtrak does not assign colors to routes, routes above display colors in a rough schema: passenger=international = a purple or green, passenger=national (interstate, long distance) = blue, highspeed=yes = red, passenger=regional = a brown or orange and service=car = yellow. Try clicking the passenger=* column's sort arrow to see:

• International routes include Cascades green (as below) and purples: Adirondack as DarkViolet (dark, as it is on a "higher-speed" corridor; see below), Maple Leaf as MediumOrchid.
  
• National routes are blue, most are overnight routes (all Amtrak night routes are passenger=national). Overnight routes are darker shades of blue, such as DarkBlue on California Zephyr and MidnightBlue on Coast Starlight. The longest national routes are darkest blue.
  
• National routes without overnight service are lighter shades of blue: SkyBlue on Carolinian and DeepSkyBlue on Palmetto. Because of this and their "medium distance" length, an argument can be made that these two routes are more regional, rather than national. No current regional routes have overnight service.
  
• Regional routes are assigned web safe colors in brown and orange palettes (smearing a bit into beige/yellowish/mustard/khaki). Exceptionally, one major regional route is a medium shade of blue: Pacific Surfliner as OceanBlue.
  
• Regional routes lighter in color (neither dark nor deeply saturated) are regular-speed routes so that regional routes on "higher-speed" corridors are colored darker (DarkOrange, SaddleBrown...). Bold white text indicates higher-speed corridors, regular black text on (lighter colored) regional routes indicates regular-speed.
  
• Lighter-shade browns are all "regular speed, shorter-length regional routes" (desaturation=shorter).

This scheme has minor flaws, for example, Vermonter is a darker brown (Sienna), yet it is not higher-speed, however it is lengthier, so darker-shade regional now has a double-meaning of higher-speed or lengthier. Have fun.

Assigning web safe brown or orange colors to each Amtrak regional route underscores the difficulty of this task and may explain why Amtrak does not assign colors, but OSM can make good choices here. For example: on Amtrak Cascades service in Washington state, OSM's Amtrak wiki and Mapzen both display(ed) a closely matching shade of green, which in turn (by intention) better matches livery of rolling stock found only on those tracks by that line and class of service; also, Amtrak and California/Railroads/Passenger show that passenger=regional Capitol Corridor route = poppy orange, color of California state flower. However, overloading/exceptions do happen with brown/orange on passenger=regional routes: Pacific Surfliner is a non-brown/orange regional route tagged with a medium shade of blue. A goal is better visual color consistency (given the above schema, which attempts to bend without breaking) across all passenger=* services. Color harmony, in motion.

About the colors and symbols in the Status and Notes column

Color and symbol legend: status of each route is indicated by a symbol, which describes the type of feature, and a color, which indicates the completeness of that feature in OSM. For more details, see Wiki Help. Meaning of symbols:

The codes 0-4 are a logical progression, but they do not all have to be used in sequence. It is perfectly acceptable to go from 0 (nothing on map) to 3 (everything done in opinion of one editor). However, there should never be a jump to level 4. r=4 should only appear after r=3, and the same with h=3 & h=4, as this implies the relation has been checked by both the editor who completed it (level 3), and a second editor (level 4). Given these are different people, a jump up to level 4 from anything other than 3 is not possible.

PTNA Config

Amtrak/Amtrak PTNA Configuration