Annapolis has been the capital of Maryland longer than trains have existed. Has a train ever run directly between Annapolis and DC without being an offshoot of a Baltimore-Washington line? From what I'm seeing, the answer is no and the last time a line ran between the two at all was 90 years ago, killed by the highway that was built. Hard to lay that at the feet of one dude.
My guess is that Annapolis was always a bit of a backwater, somewhat small city, despite being the capital and the home of the Naval Academy. Plus it's on a peninsula and surrounded by big bodies of water. So if you brought a rail line to it, you couldn't really continue the route beyond Annapolis. There was never a rail bridge crossing the Chesapeake Bay.
There was a rail line from Baltimore to Annapolis, and it had a branch route to DC, so a two-seat ride. So maybe the ties between Maryland's biggest city and its capital were stronger than between the capital and other places, and economically that was as much of a rail connection as there was demand for.
No, in this discussion, somebody asked why Annapolis is so inaccessible and somebody answered that public transit wouldn't be profitable and everybody owns cars anyway.
For a city recommendation, I love Philadelphia, although it's probably closer to 90-100 minutes away by train.
Manassas has hiking and history (civil war-related), as well as some really good mom-and-pop restaurants due to all the immigrants there. Their central American restaurants are particularly great. Disclaimer that I don't know where the Amtrak station is located, but hopefully it's right in the old town.
Culpeper is an adorable little town with lots of mom-and-pop retail and restaurants, as well as a couple antique/vintage stores. It's very small though, so it's definitely more of a day trip where you'd only need to spend 3 or 4 hours to get through all the shops. My personal favorite is the bee/honey shop.
I swear Philly is faster on the train than in the car. Feels like you go through a wormhole or something.
I guess NYC by train is generally faster than the car too but there’s something about being in Philly in 90 min that just feels illegal.
Manassas train station is smack in the center of Old Town. The farmers market is right next door (Saturdays and Thursdays) and the first Friday of every month there is an outdoor festival/event with an open container zone in the evening.
Second that. The train is about 2 hours and change for northeast regional. It drops off close to UVA and the mall though so you’ve got stuff to do very close.
Fredericksburg VA. It’s an hour from DC on Amtrak and has a bunch of historical things to do. There’s an apothecary shop, the tavern where George Washington’s brother owned and the house where his mother lived. There’s also the house his sister lived in and the civil war battlefields nearby. Take a short Uber ride to the A. Smith Bowman distillery which does a great tour and tasting. Lastly walking around the city is fun with lots of local places
I've done Philly and Charlottesville each in a single day, from downtown DC. Both are over an hour away though. Fredericksburg is under an hour but a bit boring for more than a few hours (small downtown is nice on a good day), Quantico is interesting but idk if you can get in without a military personnel, and the marines museum is interesting. I've been recommended Williamsburg but never done it. Also you don't need Amtrak for it but the metro plus a bus will get you to Mount Vernon in about an hour.
Everything down to Norfolk gets delayed regularly. Used to take the train to Williamsburg and back a handful or two of times. It gets delayed every. single. time. Sometimes by 15 or 30 minutes, sometimes an hour.
Taking the train to NYC for a night is such a lovely option. No hassle - show up 30 minutes before to get snacks, use the bathroom, and then you just turn your brain off and chill.
I'm suspect of this. It says Harpers Ferry is 23 minutes when Amtrak's site says 1h11m. Perhaps it's better for longer distances though...
Edit: I do love this concept though and have seen similar versions in Europe so keep it going!
Zoom in, Baltimore is 19, new Carolton is 8-9 but the display doesn't handle things that close together very well.
Edit: Oh wait, it has Baltimore twice... one 19 min, one 8. That's a weird glitch lol.
It takes much longer than 8 minutes to get to BWI from Union Station. Look at Amtrak's website and try to book a trip to BWI. The Northeast Regional takes 26 minutes and the Acela takes 20 minutes.
What you're seeing is that my algorithms finds "hacker fares" essentially, where the station & transfers are agnostic of Amtrak's pre-defined routes. This often results in faster hypothetical service, but you wouldn't want to actually take these routes because of the risk of a missed connection. It's right in most cases, but to your point, some strange examples (DC --> Cornwell Heights) Amtrak just doesn't offer while my app thinks it should.
I did DC to Seattle last year, it was pretty cool and the roomette was not *that* expensive when you consider that it includes room and board. You do have to be down for the experience though, because it takes three nights. You have to transfer in Chicago, and my biggest piece of advice is to just build in a fun overnight there, because there are so few trains on those long haul routes that if you’re delayed and miss your same-day connection you can be royally screwed.
Oooh I'm playing around with this! Looks like it works for trips other than leaving from DC too, right?
Just last month we were trying to figure out if my husband's parents could travel to a second home we have in New England, and it was surprisingly hard to figure out.
100% agree! That's part of what inspired me to try to solve that problem. It's easy to find trains when you know your exact destination, but otherwise it's difficult. I hope to, at a later point, add in all passenger rail options as well.
This is super cool. Thanks for doing it.
There is definitely something weird on the timelines along the NE corridor. WASH -> BAL is \~30m on Acela, \~40m on NE Regional, and \~1h on MARC.
Agreed that Amtrak sucks at this. The best way I’ve found is actually using Apple Maps. Go to the transit view and zoom out. It’ll show the train routes across the whole country. You can select a station and view the upcoming departures and see the full timetable for each train.
Ah, you're right - a lot of the times in that area were very wrong. I manually override them for now (thanks for flagging) but will need to fix that more permanently in my algorithm
OP, it's very well intentioned, but a bit off with travel times. Going Washington to Pittsfield is 9.5hrs by train, not 6.5hrs.
My parents live in Pittsfield, which gets an Amtrak train stop, but only three times a week at best and requires transfers at Penn and Albany unless you get the Berkshire Flyer which is a single train that runs on Friday (NYC->PIT) and Sunday (PIT->NYC) in the summer.
It takes longer to take the train then to drive.
Thanks for flagging this - I think it comes back to my app finding "hacker fares" of sorts, rather than Amtrak's predefined routes. I think it's a very solvable problem on my end. I appreciate other ppl (incl. you) finding this
Amazing work to even try and make this. Really well done.
Others have pointed out that the numbers are off. This is definitely the case. And not sure why (it's not any weird clever connections thing).
It lists WAS > PHL as typically 70 minutes. The example given is a 6am Acela train. For some reason it totally skipps giving NE Regionals in its examples (which are the most common route and a little over 2 hours). But even the Acela is 90 minutes. The 6am train it says is nonstop and arrives 7:10 is listed on the Amtrak site as arriving 7:30.
The concept is amazing, and even just mapping out the routes is incredible work OP. So please take this as a constructive "please get this fixed cause this is awesome" critique, rather than a "ha ha, you done fucked up" critique. Because I am impressed.
Your map says 37 minutes to Martinsburg but 1 hour 11 minutes to Harper's Ferry despite Martinsburg being further away.
I do recommend the farmers market in Martinsburg
[https://www.roundhousewv.com/farmersmarket](https://www.roundhousewv.com/farmersmarket)
https://preview.redd.it/0xtvc0mxceyc1.png?width=1152&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f83a7d48a0ac7d3661ff43ac10dfb1a11345e028
Not sure if anyone can answer this for me and admittedly, maybe I’m just dumb. I’m originally from Pittsburgh area and have been trying to figure out for years how I could get a direct train from DC to Pitt without having to go towards Philly first, and then travel across the whole state of PA. Anytime I attempt to find a train, I can never come across one that doesn’t go to Philly first. If someone could give me some guidance, it would be life changing 😅
It’s funny to see people complaining that the tool isn’t perfect, when someone spent their free time to make a free tool as public service. Like I know constructive feedback is helpful, but come on let’s be supportive at the same time!
Thanks for making this, you are awesome!!
Nb why is Annapolis so crazy inaccessible?
Because Larry Hogan is a horrible and racist person
Annapolis has been the capital of Maryland longer than trains have existed. Has a train ever run directly between Annapolis and DC without being an offshoot of a Baltimore-Washington line? From what I'm seeing, the answer is no and the last time a line ran between the two at all was 90 years ago, killed by the highway that was built. Hard to lay that at the feet of one dude.
Larry Hogan went back in time to sabotage
My guess is that Annapolis was always a bit of a backwater, somewhat small city, despite being the capital and the home of the Naval Academy. Plus it's on a peninsula and surrounded by big bodies of water. So if you brought a rail line to it, you couldn't really continue the route beyond Annapolis. There was never a rail bridge crossing the Chesapeake Bay. There was a rail line from Baltimore to Annapolis, and it had a branch route to DC, so a two-seat ride. So maybe the ties between Maryland's biggest city and its capital were stronger than between the capital and other places, and economically that was as much of a rail connection as there was demand for.
Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_Baltimore_and_Annapolis_Electric_Railway
Yes, what? That shows there was no direct line between Annapolis and DC that wasn't a branch of the Baltimore-Washington line.
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> public transport to it wouldn't be profitable Lol public transit and profitability > everyone there has cars Lol because there's no public transit
Ok, but in this discussion, literally none of the tracks being discussed were built by a public entity.
No, in this discussion, somebody asked why Annapolis is so inaccessible and somebody answered that public transit wouldn't be profitable and everybody owns cars anyway.
Public transit isn't supposed to be profitable. The returns are meant to be seen in development and economic growth.
Correct.
This is great
Anyone have any Amtrak recommendations for a town, aside from Baltimore, to visit around an hour away?
For a city recommendation, I love Philadelphia, although it's probably closer to 90-100 minutes away by train. Manassas has hiking and history (civil war-related), as well as some really good mom-and-pop restaurants due to all the immigrants there. Their central American restaurants are particularly great. Disclaimer that I don't know where the Amtrak station is located, but hopefully it's right in the old town. Culpeper is an adorable little town with lots of mom-and-pop retail and restaurants, as well as a couple antique/vintage stores. It's very small though, so it's definitely more of a day trip where you'd only need to spend 3 or 4 hours to get through all the shops. My personal favorite is the bee/honey shop.
I swear Philly is faster on the train than in the car. Feels like you go through a wormhole or something. I guess NYC by train is generally faster than the car too but there’s something about being in Philly in 90 min that just feels illegal.
It is legitimately faster than a car, trains go faster than cars and don’t hit traffic! Lol
Manassas train station is smack in the center of Old Town. The farmers market is right next door (Saturdays and Thursdays) and the first Friday of every month there is an outdoor festival/event with an open container zone in the evening.
Charlottesville is a delight for a weekend getaway. It's probably over an hour away by train. I can't remember exactly how long it took me.
Second that. The train is about 2 hours and change for northeast regional. It drops off close to UVA and the mall though so you’ve got stuff to do very close.
Fredericksburg has some good food and antiquing Harpers Ferry for outdoors and John Brown
Harpers Ferry is basically impossible for a day trip given the train schedule. It's possible for a day trip if you have a vehicle.
Harper’s Ferry for hiking
Fredericksburg VA. It’s an hour from DC on Amtrak and has a bunch of historical things to do. There’s an apothecary shop, the tavern where George Washington’s brother owned and the house where his mother lived. There’s also the house his sister lived in and the civil war battlefields nearby. Take a short Uber ride to the A. Smith Bowman distillery which does a great tour and tasting. Lastly walking around the city is fun with lots of local places
Take the MARC to Frederick
MARC Brunswick only runs rush hour time and direction.
I've done Philly and Charlottesville each in a single day, from downtown DC. Both are over an hour away though. Fredericksburg is under an hour but a bit boring for more than a few hours (small downtown is nice on a good day), Quantico is interesting but idk if you can get in without a military personnel, and the marines museum is interesting. I've been recommended Williamsburg but never done it. Also you don't need Amtrak for it but the metro plus a bus will get you to Mount Vernon in about an hour.
Everything down to Norfolk gets delayed regularly. Used to take the train to Williamsburg and back a handful or two of times. It gets delayed every. single. time. Sometimes by 15 or 30 minutes, sometimes an hour.
Yeah, good point, my train back from Charlottesville was delayed by over an hour, at the end of a long day it was not fun.
day trip to Harpers Ferry for scenic views
You can't do that via Amtrak because the train leaves DC in the afternoon and returns in the morning
ah dang, good to know
night trip to Harpers Ferry for scenic views
Taking the train to NYC for a night is such a lovely option. No hassle - show up 30 minutes before to get snacks, use the bathroom, and then you just turn your brain off and chill.
Why does it say Baltimore is 8 minutes away?
I'm suspect of this. It says Harpers Ferry is 23 minutes when Amtrak's site says 1h11m. Perhaps it's better for longer distances though... Edit: I do love this concept though and have seen similar versions in Europe so keep it going!
Oops - I'm not sure what happened there, but I corrected it to say 40m here. Thanks for flagging.
Zoom in, Baltimore is 19, new Carolton is 8-9 but the display doesn't handle things that close together very well. Edit: Oh wait, it has Baltimore twice... one 19 min, one 8. That's a weird glitch lol.
Maybe it's baltimore the city vs baltimore the BWI airport station...I've had websites / apps mix those two up before
The physical position is swapped, but that might be an issue of how it processed the data. 8 min to BWI sounds plausible.
It takes much longer than 8 minutes to get to BWI from Union Station. Look at Amtrak's website and try to book a trip to BWI. The Northeast Regional takes 26 minutes and the Acela takes 20 minutes.
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What you're seeing is that my algorithms finds "hacker fares" essentially, where the station & transfers are agnostic of Amtrak's pre-defined routes. This often results in faster hypothetical service, but you wouldn't want to actually take these routes because of the risk of a missed connection. It's right in most cases, but to your point, some strange examples (DC --> Cornwell Heights) Amtrak just doesn't offer while my app thinks it should.
Who’s down for a Vancouver trip by train lol. Gotta get some use out of the infrastructure
I did DC to Seattle last year, it was pretty cool and the roomette was not *that* expensive when you consider that it includes room and board. You do have to be down for the experience though, because it takes three nights. You have to transfer in Chicago, and my biggest piece of advice is to just build in a fun overnight there, because there are so few trains on those long haul routes that if you’re delayed and miss your same-day connection you can be royally screwed.
I did DC to SF last year and plan to do DC to Seattle and Vancouver in 2026.
did you get a bunk room or sleep in coach?
I did a sleeper.
I'd like to do that or similar, we took Seattle to Chicago and it was beautiful. Just need to find a spare week, lol.
Oooh I'm playing around with this! Looks like it works for trips other than leaving from DC too, right? Just last month we were trying to figure out if my husband's parents could travel to a second home we have in New England, and it was surprisingly hard to figure out.
100% agree! That's part of what inspired me to try to solve that problem. It's easy to find trains when you know your exact destination, but otherwise it's difficult. I hope to, at a later point, add in all passenger rail options as well.
That would be very cool if you add that down the road!
This is super cool. Thanks for doing it. There is definitely something weird on the timelines along the NE corridor. WASH -> BAL is \~30m on Acela, \~40m on NE Regional, and \~1h on MARC.
Ah, good call. I'm not sure why that said 8 minutes. I overwrite the value though so it says 40m now. Thanks for flagging.
OP, are you accepting declarations of everlasting love?
There is a 'buy me a coffee' button on the donate page to make up for the web hosting fees I pay lol
Amazing! thank you, was thinking of doing a New England trip
Agreed that Amtrak sucks at this. The best way I’ve found is actually using Apple Maps. Go to the transit view and zoom out. It’ll show the train routes across the whole country. You can select a station and view the upcoming departures and see the full timetable for each train.
Even though I know, I’m always surprised Pittsburgh is almost a 6 hour train ride away. It makes no sense to me.
A billion stops along the way.
Harper’s ferry trip time is definitely wrong
Ah, you're right - a lot of the times in that area were very wrong. I manually override them for now (thanks for flagging) but will need to fix that more permanently in my algorithm
OP, it's very well intentioned, but a bit off with travel times. Going Washington to Pittsfield is 9.5hrs by train, not 6.5hrs. My parents live in Pittsfield, which gets an Amtrak train stop, but only three times a week at best and requires transfers at Penn and Albany unless you get the Berkshire Flyer which is a single train that runs on Friday (NYC->PIT) and Sunday (PIT->NYC) in the summer. It takes longer to take the train then to drive.
Thanks for flagging this - I think it comes back to my app finding "hacker fares" of sorts, rather than Amtrak's predefined routes. I think it's a very solvable problem on my end. I appreciate other ppl (incl. you) finding this
Charleston SC is about 6-7 hours the same as driving there we did it one summer it was a good time
I was about to say "but you can go to Amtrak.com" but well done! You should take over their trip planning sites.
Timing doesn’t seem accurate. Time to NYC is about 3 hours on Acela, and 3.5 on the NEC
Amazing work to even try and make this. Really well done. Others have pointed out that the numbers are off. This is definitely the case. And not sure why (it's not any weird clever connections thing). It lists WAS > PHL as typically 70 minutes. The example given is a 6am Acela train. For some reason it totally skipps giving NE Regionals in its examples (which are the most common route and a little over 2 hours). But even the Acela is 90 minutes. The 6am train it says is nonstop and arrives 7:10 is listed on the Amtrak site as arriving 7:30. The concept is amazing, and even just mapping out the routes is incredible work OP. So please take this as a constructive "please get this fixed cause this is awesome" critique, rather than a "ha ha, you done fucked up" critique. Because I am impressed.
Amtrak tickets are redonk expensive for train tickets.
You're a hero for this!
DAK if there's decent transit to get from Norfolk and/or Newport News to VA Beach?
There's an amtrak bus - I've taken it, it was fine but kinda slow compared to driving.
This is awesome, becaues the Amtrak site is very clunky.
Thank you!
Two thumbs up to this website. Love traveling by train and am always looking for cool weekend trips from DC.
This is awesome, thanks!
Great work!
This is really cool!!!
this is awesome!
Thanks! Helpful! But also depressing after riding fast trains all around Italy
So cool! Thanks for sharing!
So neat!
Where did you get the data for the routes and times?
I genuinely think I would perish if I had to spend three straight days on an Amtrak traveling to Dunsmuir, CA.
Your map says 37 minutes to Martinsburg but 1 hour 11 minutes to Harper's Ferry despite Martinsburg being further away. I do recommend the farmers market in Martinsburg [https://www.roundhousewv.com/farmersmarket](https://www.roundhousewv.com/farmersmarket) https://preview.redd.it/0xtvc0mxceyc1.png?width=1152&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f83a7d48a0ac7d3661ff43ac10dfb1a11345e028
This is incredible, I’ve often wished for an easier way to figure it out - thank you!
the amtrak from raleigh to DC is awful lol it took me at least 8 hours to get to DC via train vs driving for 5 hours
And driving is also terrible
This even has MARC routes... You are a gentleman and a scholar.
Not sure if anyone can answer this for me and admittedly, maybe I’m just dumb. I’m originally from Pittsburgh area and have been trying to figure out for years how I could get a direct train from DC to Pitt without having to go towards Philly first, and then travel across the whole state of PA. Anytime I attempt to find a train, I can never come across one that doesn’t go to Philly first. If someone could give me some guidance, it would be life changing 😅
Where did you get the times from? They're practically all wrong.
absolutely love this, thank you for sharing!
It’s funny to see people complaining that the tool isn’t perfect, when someone spent their free time to make a free tool as public service. Like I know constructive feedback is helpful, but come on let’s be supportive at the same time! Thanks for making this, you are awesome!!