May 1, 2021 marks Amtrak’s 50th anniversary! On that day in 1971, most regional and long-distance trains in the United States either disappeared or became part of the new national rail carrier’s network (there were some exceptions to this rule, which we’ll get to later). While there are plenty of maps out there that show the general extent of Amtrak’s nascent system — including one that I made myself as part of an historical series — there aren’t any that break things down to the actual routes that were available from that day. I’ve been meaning to make just such a map for a while now, and the silver anniversary finally gave me the kick in the pants that I needed to get it done! Read more and see the map after the jump.

View the map in the window below – you can zoom in and out, pan around, and also go full screen. Or, you can also click here to experience the map in a full browser window. Read on underneath the map for a comprehensive overview of the design process.

Some Preliminary Notes

First off, it’s important to recognise that the map actually shows service as it existed at the end of May, 1971 – it just seemed churlish to leave a couple of routes off just because they started running a few days later than May 1 (New York to Chicago via Albany on May 10, and New York to Boston via Springfield on May 17). Other routes that began running later in 1971 – the West Virginian, the North Coast Hiawatha and the Illinois Zephyr – have been omitted, however. I had to draw the line somewhere, and the end of May seemed like a fair place.

The other thing to note is that I’ve used names for all the routes to make identification easier and consistent, even if some of those names weren’t actually in use at the time. While many routes carried prestigious names over from their pre-Amtrak days – the Silver Star, Super Chief/El Capitan, Broadway Limited, etc. – others remained without official names until late 1971 or even later. On the other hand, many trains plying the Northeast Corridor bore individual names for each train number, which would simply be too unwieldy for a diagram such as this. So I hope you forgive me this one concession to simplicity – names that I’ve brought forward in time a little are marked with an asterisk in the legend.

Wherever possible, I’ve used the information from the May 1, 1971 Amtrak timetable, only referring to more recent editions when that one was demonstrably incorrect (see below). Further listings of the trains as they existed on that day (here and here) were also invaluable in solving some mysteries.

Design

I definitely wanted this diagram to look like it could actually be from 1971, so I’ve consciously designed it in a very modernist style. Thick, brightly coloured route lines that butt up to each other with black dots for station markers are right out of the Vignelli playbook, while the typography is Akzidenz Grotesk (as used by the New York Subway before Helvetica took over). All the labels are very tightly letter-spaced to give it that really authentic 1970s look, and I’ve hand-kerned the map’s title to get it looking just right. Some lovely subtle paper texture and slightly out-of-register CMYK halftone dots complete the vintage look: one might even think that this diagram was printed as a poster or newspaper insert to commemorate Amtrak’s first day.

Frequency

Of everything I’ve done with this diagram, this is the part I’m most proud of: a simple, elegant way to encode frequency information into the design without having to change the thickness of route lines or use dashes or other esoteric symbology. Thin lines underneath each route bullet at termini simply count the number of trains that run each day: one per line. A thicker line denotes a multiple of five to enable quicker counting. As an example, a thick line plus four thin lines equals nine trains per day (5 plus 4). The system also handles trains that don’t run on weekends, or only three or four times a week, or even if a train changes its frequency at a station (daily in one direction, but only tri-weekly in the other). It can even help show service patterns – there are six Empire Service trains a day from Grand Central Terminal: three only go as far as Albany, while the other three continue on to Buffalo.

The Other Railroads

It’s a well-known fact that the first Amtrak timetable is ever-so-slightly wrong. Having been prepared and printed in advance, it simply couldn’t have anticipated that at the eleventh hour some railroads would refuse to join Amtrak and instead continue to operate their own passenger rail services. Two of these railroads are shown on this diagram – the Southern Railway’s services from Washington, DC through Atlanta to New Orleans, and the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s Rio Grande Zephyr from Denver to Ogden via Salt Lake City. Eventually, these routes would end up being absorbed by Amtrak, which is why I’ve chosen to include them on this diagram: the former as today’s Crescent, and the latter as part of the California Zephyr’s route from Chicago to Oakland.

However, other passenger railroads that existed into the Amtrak era never became part of it, so I made the decision to omit them (for this reason and for overall clarity of the design). The Georgia Railroad ran a daily mixed-car train from Atlanta to Augusta in order to fulfill a requirement of its charter to offer passenger services, but the journey could take hours longer than scheduled because of the freight-based nature of the train. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad continued to run intercity trains from Chicago to Peoria and Rock Island as a “public service to the state of Illinois” after deciding the fee to join Amtrak was too high. Service ended in 1978 as ridership dropped off completely. And finally, the South Shore Line continues to provide interurban service between Chicago and South Bend today.

Miscellany

The Clamdigger (local service between New London and New Haven once a day on weekdays only!) has to be the weirdest service that Amtrak inherited. It only lasted until January 1972 before being axed, so it seems they thought it was pretty weird as well.

Similarly, Batavia must have been a pretty useless station: only one northbound train stopped at it each day and there was no return southbound service! It’s not listed in the July 1971 timetable, so it seems like it was very short-lived.

Showing both of the Chicago termini turned out to be far easier than I thought it was going to be when I started. The way that the Abraham Lincoln/The National line is able to drop straight down to St. Louis because of the way I’ve aligned the stations was just an absolute bonus.

Those sneaky separate stations in Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia almost tripped me up both times! I knew about the two different Pomona stations in California, though.

The intertwining of routes in Florida is my favourite part of the diagram, but I had to redraw it three times to get it looking just right.

It’d be nice to be able to show the original – and never realised – plan to reroute the Texas Chief through Dallas. The map in the May 1971 timetable shows a proposed stop at Waxahachie on the Burlington-Rock Island Railroad (BRI), so it’s not the same as the 1973 plan to run through Bryan–College Station via the Southern Pacific. I suspect further stops would have been at Corsicana and Teague (following in the footsteps of previous BRI passenger services like the Sam Houston Zephyr), but I haven’t seen anything definitive yet.

As always, let me know what you think! Despite my best efforts, I feel sure there’s going to be both factual errors and typos, so do let me know if you think I’ve made one! Prints are available in the store, as both a clean design and as the “vintage print” version seen here.