Texas railroad map
Sheet TX-29 · 3 Class I railroads · 20 Amtrak stations · 3 Amtrak routes
Texas has more railroad route miles than any other state, almost all of it freight. Three Class I railroads carry the traffic, three Amtrak routes carry passengers, and five commuter or light rail systems operate inside the metros.
Rail lines and stations draw on the base map from about zoom 9. The cities marked are the ones with Amtrak service or a commuter rail system.
Amtrak stations in Texas
| Station | Route | County |
|---|---|---|
| Texarkana | Texas Eagle | Bowie |
| Marshall | Texas Eagle | Harrison |
| Longview | Texas Eagle | Gregg |
| Mineola | Texas Eagle | Wood |
| Dallas Union Station | Texas Eagle | Dallas |
| Fort Worth Central Station | Texas Eagle, Heartland Flyer | Tarrant |
| Cleburne | Texas Eagle | Johnson |
| McGregor | Texas Eagle | McLennan |
| Temple | Texas Eagle | Bell |
| Taylor | Texas Eagle | Williamson |
| Austin | Texas Eagle | Travis |
| San Marcos | Texas Eagle | Hays |
| San Antonio | Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited | Bexar |
| Gainesville | Heartland Flyer | Cooke |
| Beaumont | Sunset Limited | Jefferson |
| Houston | Sunset Limited | Harris |
| Del Rio | Sunset Limited | Val Verde |
| Sanderson | Sunset Limited | Terrell |
| Alpine | Sunset Limited | Brewster |
| El Paso | Sunset Limited | El Paso |
Schedules and station staffing change; some stops are unstaffed platforms with no ticket office. Check Amtrak for current times before travelling.
The three passenger routes
Texas Eagle runs Chicago–St. Louis–Texarkana–Dallas–Fort Worth–Austin–San Antonio, daily in each direction. It is the only Amtrak service on the I-35 corridor, and it is the reason Fort Worth rather than Dallas is the hub: through cars from the Eagle are switched onto the Sunset Limited at San Antonio on the days that train runs, giving a one-seat ride to Los Angeles.
Sunset Limited runs New Orleans–Houston–San Antonio–El Paso–Tucson–Los Angeles three days a week. Its Texas segment runs the full width of the state, following the old Southern Pacific line across the Trans-Pecos through Sanderson and Alpine, the closest station to Big Bend. East of Houston the route has not run beyond New Orleans to Florida since 2005.
Heartland Flyer is a daily 206-mile run between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, funded jointly by Texas and Oklahoma. Its only Texas stop apart from Fort Worth is Gainesville, near the Red River.
Freight railroads
| Railroad | Main Texas corridors | Key facilities |
|---|---|---|
| Union Pacific | Sunset Route: El Paso–Del Rio–San Antonio–Houston. Former Missouri Pacific lines north to Fort Worth, Dallas and Texarkana | Davidson Yard, Fort Worth; Englewood Yard, Houston; classification yards at San Antonio and Big Spring |
| BNSF Railway | Transcon across the Panhandle through Amarillo; Fort Worth–Temple–Houston; Fort Worth–Wichita Falls | Alliance intermodal facility north of Fort Worth; Amarillo yard; Temple yard |
| CPKC (Canadian Pacific Kansas City) | Laredo gateway to Mexico; Beaumont–Shreveport; lines into Dallas and Houston | The Laredo rail bridge, the busiest rail crossing on the U.S.–Mexico border |
Kansas City Southern and its Mexican subsidiary merged with Canadian Pacific in 2023 to form CPKC, the first railroad running under one flag from Canada through the United States into Mexico. The Texas piece of that is Laredo, where a single-track bridge over the Rio Grande carries the traffic that the four road bridges cannot.
Below the Class I railroads are dozens of short lines. The longest is the South Orient line, owned by the State of Texas and operated as Texas Pacifico, which runs from San Angelo Junction southwest toward Presidio; it is the only rail route into the Big Bend country. Others include the Fort Worth & Western out of Fort Worth and the Angelina & Neches River Railroad serving the timber mills around Lufkin.
Commuter and city rail
| System | Route | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| Trinity Railway Express (TRE) | Fort Worth Central Station to Dallas Union Station via Irving and CentrePort/DFW Airport | DART and Trinity Metro jointly |
| DART light rail | Red, Blue, Green and Orange lines across Dallas, Plano, Richardson, Garland, Carrollton and Irving | Dallas Area Rapid Transit |
| DART Silver Line | Regional rail between DFW Airport and Plano across the northern suburbs | Dallas Area Rapid Transit |
| A-train | Denton to Carrollton, connecting to the DART Green Line at Trinity Mills | Denton County Transportation Authority |
| TEXRail | Fort Worth Central Station to DFW Airport Terminal B via North Richland Hills and Grapevine | Trinity Metro |
| Houston METRORail | Red, Green and Purple lines from Northline through downtown to the Texas Medical Center, the East End and the Southeast side | Houston METRO |
| CapMetro Rail Red Line | Leander to downtown Austin via Lakeline and the Domain | Capital Metro |
All of the Dallas–Fort Worth services meet at two points: Fort Worth Central Station, where TRE, TEXRail, the Texas Eagle and the Heartland Flyer share a platform, and Dallas Union Station, where TRE meets DART light rail and the Eagle. That makes it possible to reach DFW Airport by rail from either downtown, which no other Texas metro can do.
A Dallas–Houston high-speed line has been proposed and studied for years along a route roughly parallel to I-45 with an intermediate stop in the Brazos Valley. No track has been laid. Any map showing it as an existing service is showing a proposal.