How to Scout a Train Spot Before You Go

Start wide. A pin on a blank map tells you nothing; a pin on a map that draws the railway lines, the other spots and the live cams around it tells you most of what you need. Use the layer button on the map below to switch them on, and the base-map selector to change the background.

• Which railroad, and how many lines? One line through town is a different day out from a junction where two railroads cross.
• Is there a live cam on it? An orange marker means you can watch the place before you go — step 06.
• What else is within a short drive? A second spot ten minutes away saves a slow afternoon.

What Ashland shows: a single corridor running almost due north–south through the centre of town, with the Amtrak station on it and a live cam pointed at it. No junction, no yard — every train uses the same two tracks, so one position covers all of the traffic.

Now zoom in and switch to satellite. You are looking for three things, in this order:

1. Ground that is clearly public — a sidewalk, a park, a station platform open to the public, a road overpass with a footway. The track, the ballast and the strip beside it belong to the railroad, fenced or not.
2. Somewhere legal to leave the car — marked street parking or a public lot, not a gravel pull-off beside the rails.
3. What stands between you and the track — tree lines, buildings, parked rail cars on a siding.

What Ashland shows: the two tracks run between two parallel streets, with sidewalks on both sides and marked pedestrian crossings every block. That is about as good as public access gets: you can stand on a sidewalk on either side of the line. Parking is the other half of the answer, and the town settles it: parking in downtown Ashland is free, on the street or in the public lots. Our safety guide explains how to tell public ground from railroad property when the picture is less obvious.

Satellite imagery flattens everything. Street View gives you the height of the fence, the pole in the middle of your frame and the sign that says the lot is private. Drop in on the road beside the tracks — a panorama placed on the rails almost never exists — and check:

• the sight line in both directions, and how far you can see a train coming;
• fences, signal masts, poles and wires that would cut through the picture;
• posted signs — parking limits, private property, no trespassing;
• the capture date shown in the viewer. Imagery several years old can be out of date.

Freight railroads publish no timetables, but in the United States one official number is public. Every public grade crossing has a DOT inventory number on its blue emergency sign, and the Federal Railroad Administration records, for each one, the number of daytime (6 AM to 6 PM) and nighttime through trains the railroad reports. Spot pages on this site show the count from the nearest crossing; this is the box for Ashland, live:

The count comes from crossing 860459F on England Street — a few steps from the pin.

Read the figure for what it is: an estimate the railroad files and updates every few years, not a schedule. It counts through trains only, and it says nothing about when they run. Ashland shows why you should read it as a floor rather than a promise: the town's own railroad park project speaks of more than 40 trains a day through the centre of town. Divide the daytime number by twelve for a rough trains-per-hour, then let step 06 tell you whether today matches. The tracking guide explains the FRA inventory in full. Outside the United States there is no equivalent public count: rely on the live cam and on published passenger timetables.

The rule is simple: keep the sun behind you and the side of the train facing you is lit. So you need two facts — which way the track runs, and where the sun will be at the hour you plan to stand there.

• Track running north–south: stand on the east side in the morning, the west side in the afternoon.
• Track running east–west: in the northern hemisphere the south side is lit for most of the day; the north side only early and late in summer.
• Around midday the sun is high and the light is flat on any line — a good hour for lunch, a poor one for photographs.

What Ashland shows: measured between its crossings, the line runs about13° east of due north. Morning visitors want the east sidewalk, afternoon visitors the west one. The photography guide goes further into golden hour and weather.

Nothing beats looking at the place as it is right now. If a live railcam covers the location, watch it for twenty minutes at the hour you plan to visit. You will see how often trains really pass, from which direction, how fast, where the shadows fall — and whether the street is closed for a festival that day. Ashland has one: Ashland Train Day, a street festival held each April, which is either the best or the worst day of the year to visit, depending on what you came for.

• Live cam

  Ashland (Virginia)

  Trains down the middle of Ashland’s Center Street

  Watch live

No camera at your location? Look for one further along the same line: browse all live train cams on the map. A train passing a camera thirty miles up the line is a train heading your way.

Freight is a matter of patience; passenger trains keep appointments. Whatever else happens, the trains in a published timetable will pass — which makes them the guaranteed photographs of your visit. Spot pages list the passenger services that run past each location, built from the operators' official timetable files:

Now Try It Yourself

Ashland is an easy case: flat, public, busy. Run the same seven checks on two famous locations that are harder to read, and see what changes.

Horseshoe Curve

Pennsylvania, United States

A managed viewing site rather than a roadside: step 02 turns into checking opening hours and the entrance. The nearest public crossing is more than a kilometre away, so treat its train count as indicative.

Photo: James St. John · Attribution License

Tehachapi Loop

California, United States

Rural and hilly: the satellite and Street View steps matter most here, to find the public overlook and the road that reaches it. No passenger trains — step 07 is freight only.

Photo: Clay Gilliland

Or pick any of the spotting locations on the map →

Frequently Asked Questions