I got a question . Whats the core purpose behind this endeavour ?

Ive seen a lot of other website tracking different things in the world. Is there a monetisation angle or a leisurely hobby ?

A lot of the "feedback" below seems to consist of people complaining that this is not a comprehensive map, despite your site clearly saying it's a " curated atlas of notable passenger routes — not every railway on Earth". Sigh.

I would not bet on AI. I think this map is older.

Openrailway is a bit more technical product than World Train Map. The goal of World Train Map is to have a good selection of almost all passenger rail routes around the world, where the user can hover over each route to get a quick story.

The tracing on World Train Map is based on OSM and I am thankful for both their tracings and the community which has corrected this project. Most casual users like me are not interested in signals or the technical stuff about the line, but rather simpler technical details such as speed, average speed and where you can take the route from and to.

Besides OSM is really all rail routes, while World Train Map is only passenger service.

One is AI slop, one is direct OSM data

Hahahaha thanks!

I have the same feeling. There are so many places and things to experience which I want to do. I am not sure what I am doing with my life either.

In a way I have to grow up and become "successful", but at the same time I would rather just sit in a train somewhere in the alps with the craziest view, have a small wine bottle at train table and trying the best ice cream ever in a random North Italian town.

I really admire the train vloggers on Youtube because that seems so cool to do.

I do not know where to even start, there are so many routes that I want to do right now.

It's missing some weird ones for having others operating as part of the same public transport systems too.

Old data? Where's the data from?

The high speed filter is a bit misleading. Amsterdam to Berlin is marked as high speed. But it takes 6 hours and 41 minutes to cover the ~580km distance. It might technically qualify as high speed but it doesn’t feel like it.

Washington DC to NYC is comparable.

At night I can legally drive to Amsterdam faster by car. 670km on the Autobahn in 6 hours can be done. Not as comfortable of course, but just to prove the point.

I am aware of that. Lines like Karlovy Vary - Loket or Strakonice - Tabor are missing. I have travel by rail in Czech Republic a bit too much according to my friends lol.

The reason why they are not added yet is because I am working on a verification system. I see that there are many routes in Czech Republic which are not shown either in OBB Scotty. I will see if I can use Ceske Drahy to verify and get at least almost all routes.

Also missing (a big chunk of) the Indian Pacific (east to west coast, has passenger services several times a week).

World Train Map is, by design, a curated map of interesting passenger trains, not a comprehensive map.

The problem with every comprehensive map I've seen is that they are way too comprehensive. If you look at Congo on https://www.openrailwaymap.org/, you might assume the country has a functional passenger railway network, when almost most lines shown were for bulk cargo only, fell into disrepair in the 1960s and certainly haven't had passenger services in decades if ever. Even for first world places like Australia there are tons of supposedly "main lines" listed that are nothing of the sort.

That's more like it, the Ghan (AU) track is shown

The last few days I have been working on a new verification system. I hope to be able to add many more routes through this system, so that World Train Map can have high quality routes that are verified.

Thanks!

I am trying to use a verification system to get the data from, however it is an incomplete system. The idea of the system is the route being traced either by OSM or local operators data and either use OBB Scotty (for European routes) or local operators data to make sure that the route actually exists.

For example this is how I got the data for the route Sarajevo - Ploce.

How this line was checked - Line drawn from 2 OpenStreetMap relations, their own nodes end to end: relation 2674114 (169 km), relation 1646595 (30 km) — 192 km of the route between them - Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 9 m from it - The operator publishes this line's timetable: ŽFBiH red vožnje — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing

That’s a completely different thing - a map of all railway infrastructure, vs a map of passenger rail lines.

I was about to say the same thing, having just coincidentally been looking at China's map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_China#/media...