About RailsMaps

I wanted to see the bigger picture. Not street level — country level. How does Poland's railway network compare to Germany? Where are motorways being built right now? What does an entire country's tram network look like in one view?

I couldn't find a tool that showed me that. So I built RailsMaps, then FreakMaps.

I'm an infrastructure enthusiast. I follow railway and motorway projects in Poland obsessively — proposals, timelines, what's under construction, what's just political noise. OSM reflects this accurately enough, and the community behind it is remarkable.

RailsMaps focuses on rail: mainline railways, metro, tram, light rail, narrow gauge and monorail networks. FreakMaps is where I put everything else — motorways, cities, connectivity and geography.

— Banasik

Data Source

All map data comes from OpenStreetMap (OSM) — a collaborative, open-data project maintained by a global community of over 10 million contributors. OSM data is available under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

Railway-specific tags used include railway=rail, railway=tram, railway=subway, railway=light_rail, railway=narrow_gauge and railway=monorail, along with associated attributes for speed (maxspeed), electrification (electrified, voltage), gauge (gauge) and usage (usage, service).

Update Frequency

Map tiles and underlying data are regenerated daily from the latest OpenStreetMap planet extract. This means newly mapped railway lines, corrected geometries and updated attributes typically appear on RailsMaps within 24–48 hours of being committed to OSM.

Methodology

Raw OSM data is processed through a pipeline that extracts railway-tagged ways and nodes, filters by type (mainline, tram, metro, light rail, narrow gauge, monorail), and renders them as vector map tiles. Each line is classified by its attributes — maximum permitted speed, electrification system and voltage, track gauge, usage type and construction status — allowing users to filter and colour-code the network dynamically.

Region boundaries follow ISO 3166-1/2 country and subdivision codes. Station and halt data is sourced from railway=station and railway=halt nodes in OSM. Level crossing data uses railway=level_crossing tags with safety attributes where available.

Coverage

RailsMaps covers 200+ countries and regions across all continents. Each region page offers the same set of interactive filter modes:

• Default — full railway network colour-coded by rail type
• Max Speed — lines by maximum permitted speed (km/h)
• Electrification — AC, DC and non-electrified systems by voltage
• High-Speed — dedicated HSR lines and upgraded fast corridors
• Track Gauge — standard, broad, narrow and mixed-gauge lines
• Usage — passenger, freight, mixed, heritage and industrial lines
• Stations — station and halt locations with density overlay
• Level Crossings — crossing locations with safety classification
• Under Construction / Proposed — lines being built or planned
• Historical — disused and abandoned railway lines

Urban rail types — tram, metro, light rail, narrow gauge and monorail — each have dedicated map views with their own filter modes.

Data Accuracy

Map completeness and accuracy depend on OpenStreetMap contributor activity in each region. European and East Asian rail networks tend to be exceptionally well mapped; some regions in Africa and Central Asia may have incomplete coverage. Speed, electrification and gauge attributes are not always present — where data is missing, lines appear without that classification. RailsMaps displays what OSM contributors have mapped; it does not fill gaps or infer missing attributes.

Related Projects

FreakMaps — interactive maps for motorways, expressways, cities and urban infrastructure. Also built on OpenStreetMap data, also updated daily. Explore city populations, urban density, motorway lane counts, speed limits and more.