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KmH

KmH

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Dec 6, 2014
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Is this heaven? No. It's Iowa.
Either I just discovered something Google Maps has long had, or it's a new feature.

As an example, if you choose Directions and enter: Amtrak Station - DEN, 1701 Wynkoop Street, Denver Union Station, Denver, CO 80202

and:

Amtrak Station - SAC, 401 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 as your destination

Google Maps will show on the map the road route, and air/ground route to the stations.

If you click on the Transit icon at upper left Google Maps will show on the map where the train tracks go.
 
KmH said:
Either I just discovered something Google Maps has long had, or it's a new feature.

As an example, if you choose Directions and enter: Amtrak Station - DEN, 1701 Wynkoop Street, Denver Union Station, Denver, CO 80202

and:

Amtrak Station - SAC, 401 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 as your destination

Google Maps will show on the map the road route, and air/ground route to the stations.

If you click on the Transit icon at upper left Google Maps will show on the map where the train tracks go.
Click to expand...
I have no idea if it's new, but I thank you for pointing it out.
 
and I have never found it,,,

now if they only put the feature back in where I could save it to my garmin,,,,,

I wouldn't have to point to point plot it to take with me
 
Speaking of mapping - there's an app for iPhones and iPads I really kind of like that works on cellular instead of wifi, it's called USRail Pro. It's free and it does live GPS while you're onboard. I like being able to follow where I'm going while I'm going. Drains the battery fast, though, as well as cellular time.
 
The functionality of transit on google maps may have been around since 2009, but it's only been in the last couple of years or so that Amtrak has gotten in there well. It is pretty amazing how far they've come in the last couple of years. In fact, now it can show connectivity between agencies better than ever before, like how to transfer to the Tri Rail from get all the way to the airport from the Silver Meteor.

But not all the trains are loaded. I can get an Amtrak route from Savannah to Los Angeles, but not to Dallas.

Interestingly, they show the routing from Chicago to Dallas on the TE through Shreveport. Nice idea, but it don't run that way.
 
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Thanks KmH. Learn something new here every day. Same procedure even works for Google Earth - at least the end points I tried. Both can remove some of the puzzlement about which route is followed in some urban areas.
 
VentureForth said:
The functionality of transit on google maps may have been around since 2009, but it's only been in the last couple of years or so that Amtrak has gotten in there well.
Click to expand...
If you would have clicked on the link in my post, you would have read that it was specifically addressing adding Amtrak data into Google Transit in 2009.

Screen shot for the link-averse:

Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 3.50.39 PM.png

Most of the rest of the routes were completely added by the end of 2010.
 
OK. I won't dispute you. You've got the data to back you up. I'm probably at a disadvantage being forced on IE 8 at work. I just got Firefox last year, and like I say, I can get most of the routings but all city-pairs don't work.

Don't suppose you could'a shrunk that image by about 85%, eh? :blink:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 10, 2009 ATK-09-058

Contact: Media Relations

202 906.3860

AMTRAK PARTNERS WITH GOOGLE TRANSIT TO OFFER RAIL TRAVEL AS AN OPTION FOR TRIP PLANNING

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Travelers may now use Google Transit – Google’s public transportation trip planning function – to plan their journeys on Amtrak as five of the railroad’s routes were recently added to the Google Transit system. The Amtrak/Google Transit partnership supports Amtrak’s corporate goals to promote connectivity among transportation systems, provide passengers with a seamless transportation experience, and work with state partners to grow public transportation.
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Ahhh, much more civil, even to the dumbest of us.
 
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The second pair of cities I tried didn't work in the sense that it didn't provide the most direct route between CHI and CVS. But by hand-massaging the Google Earth system using an intermediate station (CHW) and CVS got it to show the part of the route I was interested in. Perhaps there's a way to do it piecemeal (as on Bing Maps where you can add a destination) and end up with the entire route highlighted.
 
I wouldn't rely too heavily on the accuracy of the Amtrak routes highlighted on either Google Maps, Google Earth or this website... http://asm.transitdocs.com/ ...especially in urban areas. Using the first two to follow the route of the Cardinal from CHI to Charleston WV the route is shown taking a 90° sharp left turn at a crossing. These also show the routes for the City of New Orleans making a 45° turn at a crossing and the later shows those routes going abruptly from a Southern to an Eastern heading at the South end of the large yard just South of Union Station - where the two are on separate grades!!

Unless some additional trackwork has been done since the date of the aerial imagery, all of these are impossible routings.
 
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I love this functionality in Google Maps! However, sometimes it doesn't show you the best way to get from Point A to Point B. Case in Point: Let's say you type in Diridon Station (in San Jose) to Yuma, AZ Amtrak. You set it for a Wednesday or Friday when you know there's a guaranteed connection between the Coast Starlight and the Sunset Limited (when there's no schedule variations). Google maps simply won't show you that option - instead, clicking on the transit option will show much less appealing combinations of bus routes to LA and the train to Yuma. Don't know why this is - google maps may be set up to not allow connections that tight (even though it's a guaranteed connection).
 
I tried to go from LAX to SAC and it wouldn't show the CS no matter how I tried - but it did give me three bus options
 
I checked the Capitol Limited Route and tried to zoom in on the area east of Pittsburgh. Somewhere around Confluence, PA, the route leaves the RR and takes to the highway through Greensburg to Pittsburgh. Either Amtrak has rerouted the train (unlikely, since this involves several miles where there are no tracks), or the map is wrong. Overall, the Capitol Limited Route is pretty well displayed, unless you zoom in. Then it gets a bit less reliable.

Many times, I've seen passengers who have tried to follow our route on their GPS. Things go OK for a while. Then the tracks run across Farmer Brown's soybean field and the GPS has nothing to relate to, so it concludes that the train is on the nearest highway. We live in a highway-oriented world.

Tom
 
Ryan said:
VentureForth said:
Don't suppose you could'a shrunk that image by about 85%, eh? :blink:
Click to expand...
It's less than screen width on both my computer at work and 15" laptop here at home. 1,000 px on the long edge isn't very big.
Click to expand...
The pixels are irrelevant. I have two side-by-side 21" monitors. It was the size of the text in the screen grab relative to the rest of the posting that made it a bit obtrusive.

FormerOBS said:
Many times, I've seen passengers who have tried to follow our route on their GPS. Things go OK for a while. Then the tracks run across Farmer Brown's soybean field and the GPS has nothing to relate to, so it concludes that the train is on the nearest highway. We live in a highway-oriented world.

Tom
Click to expand...
For that reason, I recommend to folks looking on AU for advise tracking programs that don't relay on highways, like MyTracks or GPS Essentials for the Android.

Now, they can't tell you the distance by rail to the next waypoint like a highway based GPS can, but they can often give you a time to destination using an average rate-of-closing. That kinda works, but no one should call grandpa to pick them up based on that sort of information.

So the Google Maps transit thing works pretty good for some local transit agencies. In fact, some send you to it for trip planning. But for Amtrak, it's a gimmick at worst, and a preliminary planning tool at best.
 
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It may be a bit too much to expect these types of mapping systems to show correct routes when more than a single train are involved. But when only one train is involved and the endpoints entered are but a small segment of that trains total route, I wouldn't expect to see such a bizarre routing as this:

ImpossibleRRRoute.jpg

This from Google Maps switched over the its "Satellite" mode showing a portion of the CHI to IND route of the Cardinal. But the date of the aerial imagery is about two years old, so there's some likelihood turnouts had been installed to make that route possible. Looks like that turn may have been possible at one time judging from the abandoned roadbed.
 
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Shown below (using Google Earth imagery) is a portion of the route depicted for the City Of New Orleans on this website: http://asm.transitdocs.com/

BizarreRRRoute.jpg

This location is about 1.2 miles South of Chicago Union Station. While it is possible to go over the Chicago River in the East-West direction shown, departure from Union Station would have to be either:

• To the North, making three turns and travelling almost 8 miles to get to the level of the bridges over the yard and river,

• Backing out to the South, then West for about 2 miles then heading East and forward over those bridges or

• Heading to the South normally to beyond the yard and bridges, then backing and turning to the West far enough to catch one of the tracks over those bridges by heading to the East.

I've no idea how these mapping systems work, but maybe there's simply too many intersecting tracks and the system "gets lost" in the maze. But look on the bright side - at least it's smart enough not to follow any roads!
 
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Ah, but across that bridge it does go! That's how it gets to the lakefront.

Not sure what Amtrak train would come up from the south across the Stevenson in the first image.
 
Metra Electric Guest said:
Ah, but across that bridge it does go! That's how it gets to the lakefront.
Click to expand...
OK, then what route does Amtrak's City Of New Orleans take to get to those two bridges, heading in an Easterly direction (after departing Union Station in Chicago)?

FWIW, here's a quote from the route guide for the City Of New Orleans... "As you continue south, you’ll cross the Chicago River. . ." which implies it crosses that river heading South - not East

But you may be missing the point I was trying to make: both of those images depict routes/turns that are utterly impossible for any railroad train to negotiate - short of having a crane lift it car-by-car from one track, swing it and then drop it on the other track. Note that a third possibility has just been added to Post #21.
 
The train backs out of CUS and then does a wye to get over the bridge. Reverse move when it is coming back.
 
MrFSS said:
The train backs out of CUS and then does a wye to get over the bridge. Reverse move when it is coming back.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that clarification. Any clarification for the impossible Cardinal route shown in Post #19?
 
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