World Train Map Atlas — the world's legendary train routes, as open data

1,538 train routes · 120 countries · ≈ 531,400 km of route, every route with its key facts and its line, from worldtrainmap.com, the interactive world railway map.

High-speed spines (Eurostar, TGV, Shinkansen, AVE), classic long-distance runs (Trans-Siberian, California Zephyr), night trains (Nightjet, the Ghan), the scenic lines people fly in just to ride (Glacier Express, Bernina Express, the Jacobite), and the heritage and mountain railways around them.

🗺️ Explore it interactively: worldtrainmap.com 🤖 Use it from an AI assistant: free MCP server at https://worldtrainmap.com/mcp (how to connect), or run it from this repo: npm install && npm start (mcp/)

The site was renamed. It was TrainRouter at trainrouter.com until 11 August 2026 and is now World Train Map at worldtrainmap.com. The old domain redirects path for path, so old links still work, and https://trainrouter.com/mcp still answers directly rather than redirecting, because JSON-RPC clients do not follow redirects. The repository, the Zenodo DOI and the MCP registry name (com.trainrouter/atlas) keep their old identifiers on purpose: renaming them would break more than it would tidy.

Two licences

Since the 8 November 2026 cut (release v1.2.0) the files carry two licences, because the lines and the facts come from different places:

The lines are derived from OpenStreetMap: 1,396 of the 1,538 are drawn node for node from OSM route relations, 26 are snapped onto the OSM rail graph by map matching, and the other 116 have no record of their origin, which is not evidence that they are ours, so they are treated as derived too. The whole GeoJSON is therefore ODbL, including the facts repeated in its properties; the same facts stay CC BY 4.0 in the CSV and JSON. If you only need the facts, use those two files and the ODbL never applies.

Related MCP server: db-fahrplan-mcp

Which version holds what

Earlier releases (v1.0.0 and v1.1.0 on 12 July, the 23 July cut of 961 routes) labelled every file CC BY 4.0. The 12 July lines were hand-placed, but the 23 July cut already held a handful of corridors traced from OpenStreetMap (Brenner, Oslo–Göteborg, Oslo–Stockholm, the Pustertalbahn), and those lines were ODbL all along; this release is the first that says so file by file.

Schema

Three more properties, in routes.geojson only:

The GeoJSON FeatureCollection also carries license and attribution members, so the credit travels with the file.

Quick start

import pandas as pd
routes = pd.read_csv("data/routes.csv")
routes.nsmallest(10, "fame_rank")[["name", "from", "to", "distance_km"]]

import geopandas as gpd
gdf = gpd.read_file("data/routes.geojson")   # ODbL: credit © OpenStreetMap contributors
gdf.plot(column="category", figsize=(16, 8))

Sources, accuracy & provenance

• Facts are compiled from public references, not from any licensed dataset: operators' own figures, timetables, press material and encyclopaedic articles. A few distance and top-speed figures were measured on OpenStreetMap track instead; they are a small, insubstantial extract of the OpenStreetMap database. Individual facts like these aren't copyrightable; the licence covers the curated compilation.

• Geometry began as hand-placed waypoints in July 2026 and has since been redrawn from OpenStreetMap: from route relations where mappers describe the service, and by map matching onto the OSM rail graph where they do not. Each feature says which, where a record exists.

• Facts are approximate published values: distance, top speed, journey time, operator, opening year and ridership. Good for exploration and visualization, not operations.

• Curated, not exhaustive: the world's notable routes, not every line on earth. Route names and the one-line highlights are the author's own wording.

• Deliberately excluded (they live only on the site, to keep provenance clean): per-route stories and sights, photos (Wikimedia Commons, separately licensed), and the city-to-city journey guides (derived from public schedule feeds).

• Basemap ≠ data: the interactive site renders these routes over OpenFreeMap (OpenStreetMap) tiles; those tiles are not part of this dataset.

License & attribution

• Facts (data/routes.csv, data/routes.json): CC BY 4.0. Credit World Train Map; a link to https://worldtrainmap.com, or to the route page in url, satisfies it.

• Lines (data/routes.geojson): ODbL 1.0, © OpenStreetMap contributors. A database you derive from it and use publicly must be offered under the ODbL too; a map or image made from it needs the credit "© OpenStreetMap contributors". (full notice)

• Code (the MCP server in mcp/): MIT.

Also available on

• Hugging Face: huggingface.co/datasets/Flightmussy/trainrouter-atlas, the three files of data/, under the same two licences

• Kaggle: kaggle.com/datasets/flightmussy/world-train-routes, the two fact files only, because Kaggle allows a dataset one licence label and the lines are ODbL

• Zenodo (archived, DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21322030, the concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest published release. Zenodo allows one licence label per record, so from v1.2.0 the record is labelled ODbL, which covers the whole archive; the fact files inside it are also CC BY 4.0

Until 24 August 2026 this README and the site linked a Kaggle mirror at kaggle.com/datasets/albanius/.... That account name has never been ours and the link was dead from the day it was written; the mirror above is the real one.

Citing

World Train Map Atlas: the world's legendary train routes (2026). worldtrainmap.com. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21322030. https://github.com/Flightmussy/trainrouter-atlas. Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.

Updating

The files are generated from the atlas source by the site's exporter, which writes routes.csv, routes.json, routes.geojson and data/LICENSE together, so the notice cannot drift from the files. New versions land here first; publishing a GitHub release mints a fresh Zenodo DOI and pushes the mirrors via sync-mirrors.yml, whose jobs each skip themselves when their API token is not configured.

Also in this repo

• mcp/ — source of the World Train Map MCP server (live at https://worldtrainmap.com/mcp, listed in the Official MCP Registry as com.trainrouter/atlas), which serves the atlas as tools for Claude and other MCP clients. It is deployed from the site's own atlas rather than from data/, and it serves facts only, no geometry. Its atlas_stats tool reports exactly what it is serving.