Abandoned Railroads Map: 25 Maps of Dead Lines and Ghost Stations

People who map abandoned railways keep the timetable going after the trains have stopped. One crowd-sourced map has reached 16,332 dead lines in 161 countries, each with its mileage and the railroads that ran it; a Romanian inventory notes every bent rail of one narrow-gauge line by its kilometre post. Others walk the trackbed and write down what is left: a sealed station under Cincinnati, a viaduct buried in a Hungarian valley, a goods shed in County Antrim where the narrow gauge ran on the left and the broad gauge on the right.

Abandoned Railroads Map: 16,332 Lost Lines Worldwide

“Abandonment ends literally at the Canadian border”, says the line from Danville to Republic, Washington, 31.8 miles of Great Northern track that carries on as a railroad in Canada and as a rail trail in the US. Every one of the 16,332 lines gives its length, its railroads and its sources, from abandonedrails.com to Google Books, and many credit the same contributor, Andrew Grigg. Some are detective work: Beverly Station, Missouri, “is no longer printed on maps” and was found on a 1914 topographic map. Separate layers hold reactivated lines, unbuilt ones, interurbans, logging and military railroads, and the rest of the 161 countries.

Objects

16,33216,332 lines

Countries

United StatesCanadaUnited Kingdomand 158 more

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Petite Ceinture Map: Walking Paris's Abandoned Railway

The old station of Charonne is a concert hall called La Flèche d’Or on the street side; from the tracks it lies abandoned and “curiously decorated with old train parts”. This map of Paris’s former belt railway is an explorers’ log of 116 sections, tunnels and stations, written by people who walked them. The Charonne tunnel runs 1.3 km with six ventilation shafts where a stretch was covered for a park; the Tunnel du Moulin, 225 m long, holds a train whose bar car the workers use to store tools. Near an SNCF generator the hum carries 50 m, and the notes advise not to linger because of the static electricity.

Objects

11652 points, 64 lines

Countries

France

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Black Hills Railroads Map: Gold Mines, Spurs and Narrow Gauge

Jim Hardin had his own railroad, nearly 3 miles long, climbing over 700 feet to serve three mines, and a single engine called the Natalie to work them all. This map of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming sorts 417 features into narrow gauge, standard gauge and three-railed track, with layers for stations, mines and mills, and mining camps that never got a railway. The notes read like a local history: the Black Hills and Ft. Pierre began in 1881 as a Homestake Mining Company venture to haul timber for the largest gold mine in the country, and the McLaughlin Tie and Timber Company is “the least documented and least known railroad in the Black Hills”.

Objects

417299 points, 118 lines

Countries

United States

Made with

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Disused Railways Map UK: 3,924 Closed Lines and Halts

The Brampton Town branch began in 1775 as the Earl of Carlisle’s waggonway, carried passengers behind horses from 1836 and closed in 1923. This map gathers 3,924 closed lines, stations and halts across the United Kingdom, and every line lists its openings and closures, often freight and passengers apart. The Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith lost its freight in July 1964 but kept passengers between Keswick and Penrith until March 1972. In Cumbria the ironstone lines of the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway were “important during the 19th and early 20th centuries until reserves were depleted”.

Objects

3,9243,054 points, 814 lines, 56 areas

Countries

United Kingdom

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Dead Road Map: Stalin's Unfinished Arctic Railway

Near the Turukhan river lie two steam locomotives and about ten wagons, and the staff of the Yanov Stan weather station say they were thrown off the line because they were in the way when the rails were taken out. This map by MichelTitou follows the unfinished Salekhard–Igarka railway, built by Gulag prisoners, through 355 points of camps, depots, quarries and bridges, with expedition diaries in Russian and English. At the first stop, a four-span steel bridge over the Makovskaya, the expedition understood why an official had predicted their quick flight: the midges. One point marks where the adventure novel “The Heir from Calcutta” was written in a camp on the line in 1950 and 1951.

Objects

355298 points, 54 lines, 3 areas

Countries

Russian Federation

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Rio Grande Southern Map: 143 Bridges, Milepost by Milepost

The Rio Grande Southern had 143 bridges on 216 miles of main and branch lines, “273 feet short of 3 miles” of bridges in all, and on the Ophir High Line it ran on trestles more than on solid ground. This map walks the Colorado line from Ridgway to Durango in layers of mileposts, 1,811 features in all, with notes signed by their contributors’ initials. Bridge 9-A over Pleasant Valley Creek was 182 feet long and 68 feet high; at milepost 11.2 a slash in the trees may be the temporary track laid to recover locomotive 455 after a runaway in November 1943. The author warns that the map “may be approaching the limits” of Google My Maps and moved two lumber railroads to a second one.

Objects

1,8111,277 points, 490 lines, 44 areas

Countries

United States

Made with

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Kanto Abandoned Railway Map: Japan's Lost Light Railways

In 1945 the Ministry of Transport moved its offices into railway carriages parked in the Keisei line’s Ueno tunnel, and the staff disliked working there for the bad air and damp. That evacuation line is one of 3,366 abandoned and unbuilt railways, stations and sidings in this Japanese map of the Kanto region. The Kusakaru Electric Railway climbed 55.5 km along the contours from Shin-Karuizawa to Kusatsu Onsen on 762 mm track without a single tunnel and closed in 1962; the Yachimata line closed in 1940 because the army built an airfield over it.

Objects

3,3661,829 points, 1,471 lines, 66 areas

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Cincinnati Subway Map: The Tunnel That Never Saw a Train

“Wooden stringers are bolted to the floor at 59 inches centre-to-centre for rails that were never laid.” Ten notes trace the Cincinnati Subway, built from 1920 to 1928 and never used: a little over 2 miles of tunnel under Central Parkway, which have carried a 52-inch water main since 1956. Race Street station is intact, Linn Street was sealed and proposed as a fallout shelter in the 1960s, and at Walnut Street the tunnels stop short against a bricked-up wall. The stations above ground were demolished for I-75.

Objects

108 points, 2 lines

Countries

United States

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Disused Railway Stations Map: Manchester's Closed Stations

Manchester Liverpool Road opened in 1830 and closed in 1975, and this map dates 132 closed stations around Manchester, Oldham and Bury the same way, each linked to disused-stations.org.uk and Wikipedia. The city lost Exchange and Central in 1969, Oldham Road in 1968 and Mayfield in 1960. Ducie Bridge, a separate station outside Victoria reached by steps from the street, closed in 1884 with “very little info available online”. Oldham Werneth and Oldham Mumps closed in 2009 when the line was turned over to Metrolink.

Objects

154132 points, 22 lines

Countries

United Kingdom

Made with

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Milwaukee Road Map: Tunnels and Substations Left Behind

At Two Dot, Montana, railroad mile 1,347.5, three crew bungalows remain, but the substation is gone; after an explosion in 1937 an outdoor one was built beside it. This map follows the Milwaukee Road’s electrified Pacific Coast Extension across Montana, Idaho and Washington in 266 features: 28 substations, 54 mainline tunnels, notable bridges and ferry landings. The Boylston tunnel, 1,973 feet long, is part of the Palouse to Cascades Trail, though the trail goes up and around it, in the author’s own photos from 2014. A branch to the Hanford site, built for farm goods, is abandoned like most of the government lines around it.

Objects

266209 lines, 57 areas

Countries

United StatesCanada

Made with

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Unfinished Railway Map: Ruins of the Imai Line in Shimane

Under the Orochi Crying Bridge, a four-arch viaduct, the river sounds strangely loud in one spot, and people say the serpent has cried since the day it was decided the line would never open. This Japanese map of 29 points leads to the ruins of the Imai line, part of a Hiroshima–Hamada railway stopped in wartime and again in 1980. Concrete arches were used because iron was short during the war; a straight tunnel of 1,633 m opens only for events. At one closed-off point a visitors’ notebook waits, where the new line’s bridge and the old line’s four-arch bridge can be seen at the same time.

Objects

2929 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

Google My Maps
Narrow-Gauge Railway Map: Sibiu–Agnita by Kilometre Post

Track 3 at the depot is bent, pulled out of line when a lorry caught it while carrying away locomotive 764.155 to Târgu Mureș. This Romanian map surveys the threatened Sibiu–Agnita narrow-gauge line in 1,114 entries by kilometre post, from 2017 and 2020: every bridge with its length and heritage code, missing sleepers, missing footways, slipped embankments. A wooden goods shed is “in very poor condition, in danger of collapse”, the station at Agnita is rented out, and one stretch of track is “good, complete, used occasionally, repaired by volunteers”.

Objects

1,1141,085 points, 29 lines

Countries

Romania

Made with

Google My Maps
Railroad History Map: Who Owned the West's Lost Lines

In 1858 a railway at Bonneville, Oregon, ran on wooden rails with mule power and five-foot gauge; it was rebuilt with strap iron in 1861, shut down in 1863 and reopened in 1878. This uMap by RivianExplorer gives 334 western railroad segments their family tree, every sale and lease with its date. Hastings to the Kansas line in Nebraska passes through seven companies in its first 25 years. A line from Los Angeles to South Pasadena ends its chain with “abandoned” and a credit, “mapped by Doug Spurling”.

Objects

334334 lines

Countries

United States

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Ghost Metro Stations Map: Paris's Closed and Unopened Stops

Not one passenger has ever used Haxo station; its exits to the street were never built, yet it is a classic of night walks and opens to all on heritage days. This short French map holds 11 ghost stations of the Paris Métro. Croix-Rouge, the first terminus of line 10, closed when France entered the Second World War, and in 2007 its platform held old erotic prints for a BnF exhibition. Saint-Martin closed too, and after the war it turned out to lie 100 metres from Strasbourg-Saint-Denis; Arsenal now trains electrical technicians, and Porte Molitor, meant for the Parc des Princes crowds, never opened at all.

Objects

1111 points

Countries

France

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Adelaide Tram Map: Stop by Stop, a Network Closed in 1958

Maid and Magpie Junction took its name from the hotel that still stands at the corner, where trams for Magill turned right and those for Paradise turned left. This map rebuilds Adelaide’s electric tramways of 1909 to 1958 in 506 features: routes, depots, signal boxes and every stop, each with its “tramway facilities” (stop sign, shelter, telephone, time recording clock) and archive photos. In 1942 a single track with a barely adequate power supply was laid to Cheltenham for the munitions plants. The Hanson Street signal box was the only one preserved and now stands at the Tramway Museum in St Kilda.

Objects

506465 points, 41 lines

Countries

Australia

Made with

Google My Maps
Estonian Narrow-Gauge Railway Map: Stations and Trackbeds

On the old goods platform at Risti, a cross made of rails has stood since 23 August 1999 for everyone deported from West Estonia; it is called “The rails remember…” and was designed by a local doctor, poet and cartoonist, Viljar Ansko. This uMap by Chas3r follows Estonia’s narrow-gauge trackbeds through 111 stations and lines, often with the architect and the fate of the building. Lihula’s functionalist station of 1935 closed with the Rapla–Virtsu line in 1968 and became a home; at Virtsu the wooden station was destroyed in the fighting of 20 September 1944, but the depot, luggage shed and platform remain.

Objects

11199 points, 12 lines

Countries

Estonia

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Indiana Abandoned Railroads Map: Lines, Spurs, Interurbans

South of Bloomington, the New Albany and Salem’s old main line through Smithville had grades over 2 per cent and washouts, and the best locomotive of its day could haul only 15 loaded cars over it; 7.83 miles of it are abandoned. This map of 743 Indiana lines splits abandoned lines, spurs and interurbans from those still running, and gives each abandoned line its miles, its successors (Conrail, CSX, Norfolk Southern) and a link to its abandonment record. Many entries come with a Google Earth file for a “simulated flight” along the route, and a pin links to the rest of “Butch’s Railroad Maps”.

Objects

7434 points, 739 lines

Countries

United States

Made with

Google My Maps
Old Railway Bridges Map: 244 Structures Marked for Infill

At Newton Tony, Wiltshire, the overbridge on Old Lodge Lane has failed, with a live load rating of 0 tonnes. This map lists 244 bridges and abutments of Britain’s Historical Railways Estate, the structures of closed lines now in National Highways’ care, each with its structure number, status, risk score and intended fate. 92 are marked failed and 10 already lost; most of the confirmed intentions say “Infill”, 18 say demolish. The abutments at Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen were demolished in early 2021.

Objects

244244 points

Countries

United Kingdom

Made with

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Taiwan Sugar Railway Map: Cane Lines, Sidings and Mills

The Dounan line ran on three rails so two gauges could share it; it lost its passengers in 1978, its freight in 1999, and at the end of 2013 came back as the Dounan bicycle path. This Japanese-language map traces Taiwan’s sugar railways in 5,788 lines, sidings, stations and factory polygons, down to the yard tracks inside the sugar mills. The Xiluo line ran over the Xiluo Bridge from 1953 until its rails were taken off the bridge in 1979, and a layer even holds hand-pushed trolley lines.

Objects

5,7884,045 points, 1,700 lines, 43 areas

Countries

Taiwan

Made with

Google My Maps
Lost Railways Map Hungary: Buried Viaducts and Vanished Trams

Until 2007 the Somlyóbánya viaduct was the largest of its kind in Hungary: seven arches, 200 metres long and up to 30 metres high, built in 1911 and 1912 for a coal mine in Nógrád, and now buried. This community map collects 112 lost narrow-gauge and tram rails. The Salgóbánya rack railway of 1881, the first industrial narrow-gauge rack line in the country, climbed 222.6 metres in 5,830 metres for the steelworks; tram 7 ran from Szeged to Kiskundorozsma from 1950 to 1977.

Objects

11233 points, 78 lines, 1 area

Countries

HungarySlovakia

Made with

Google My Maps
County Antrim Railway Map: Narrow Gauge Traces in Street View

“You can just make out the narrow gauge bridge pillars in front of the mainline bridge.” Most of the 111 points of this map link to a Street View image of what is left of four County Antrim lines: the Ballycastle Railway, the Ballymena and Larne, the Ballymena, Cushendall and Red Bay, and the Carnlough mineral line. The notes teach you how to look: slightly wider abutments on one side of an overbridge, a wider embankment, bridge abutments on both sides of a road. At the Ballymoney goods shed the narrow gauge ran on the left and the broad gauge on the right.

Objects

11198 points, 13 lines

Countries

United Kingdom

Made with

Google My Maps
Lithuania Narrow-Gauge Railway Map: 674 Lines from Old Maps

A Russian field railway to Jelgava, 47 km long, was laid in June 1915 and is drawn here from a map in a 1927 book on portable military railways. This atlas of Lithuania’s narrow-gauge lines, updated to 1 December 2024, names for most of its 674 lines and stops the old topographic sheet they were found on. Peat bogs, sawmills and quarries had their own lines; the Marijampolė–Vilkaviškis line was built in the First World War and torn up around 1927, and the broad-gauge line from Kūgeliai to Mažeikiai, begun by the German army in the same war, was never finished.

Objects

674437 points, 237 lines

Countries

LithuaniaRussian FederationBelarusand 1 more

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Disused Railways Map Austria: Horse Lines, Sidings and Relics

A double-track siding led to a petrol plant with the code name “Ofen XI + XII”, and remains can still be found today. This German-language map of Austria and its neighbours holds 5,503 features: closed lines split into routes that are mostly certain and mostly approximate, stations without passengers, relics, museum and draisine lines and plans. The horse railway from Budweis to Linz and Gmunden ran on 1,106 mm gauge; on the Gröden railway from Klausen to Plan a road was built on the trackbed and a viaduct survives. One honest note at the old Gmunden Traundorf station says there may never have been a track there.

Objects

5,5031,737 points, 3,665 lines, 101 areas

Countries

AustriaItalyGermanyand 5 more

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Abandoned Railway Map Italy: The Bridges of Rolo–Mirandola

The railway bridge over the Secchia had three spans of iron truss; over the years it shrank to little more than a footbridge without railings, and it was removed as dangerous around the 1970s. This Italian map follows the abandoned Rolo–Mirandola line in 112 points with photographs by F. Gazzoli from 2020 and 2021, often set beside archive pictures from the mid-1900s. Moglia station is now a private house, the vault on the ramp up to the bridge has collapsed, and two layers draw the routes proposed in 1910 and 1914 that were never built.

Objects

11279 points, 33 lines

Countries

Italy

Made with

Google My Maps
Kettle Valley Rail Trail Map: 650 km of Old Railway in BC

“The Penticton Indian Band own this section of the trail. It is recommended riders contact the band before use”, and the detour on Highway 97 comes with “extreme caution”. This map of the Kettle Valley and Columbia & Western rail trails, nearly 650 km from Hope to Castlegar, judges every section honestly: many are “unresolved”, shared with motor vehicles, with loose rock and long stretches without services. Between Cascade West and Grand Forks the old railway is being upgraded as the Kettle River Heritage Trail, and 216 points add access points, campgrounds and bike rentals.

Objects

216198 points, 18 lines

Countries

Canada

Made with

Google My Maps

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