Canadian National Railway Ownership and Trackage Rights in North America

A subset of the North American Rail Network Lines dataset, this vector dataset details ownership and trackage rights for the Canadian National Railway across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It is derived from the Federal Railroad Administration's National Transportation Atlas Database and provides geographic reference at a scale of 1:24,000 or better within the U.S. The dataset includes attributes for railroad type, passenger service, and STRACNET designation.

Use Cases

• Analyze Canadian National Railway's trackage rights and ownership patterns across North America using the ownership and trackage rights attributes.
• Map the geographic distribution of STRACNET-designated rail lines for security or logistics planning.
• Study the relationship between railroad type and passenger service availability on the CN network.
• Conduct spatial analysis of the rail network's coverage across all 50 U.S. states, Canada, and Mexico using the vector line data.

Strengths

• Provides continent-wide coverage of rail infrastructure across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
• Includes specific attributes for ownership, trackage rights, type, passenger service, and STRACNET designation.
• Maintained by the authoritative Federal Railroad Administration as part of the National Transportation Atlas Database.

Limitations

• Attribute details and a complete data dictionary are not provided in the input and require accessing an external link.
• The specific number of features (rows) and file size are unknown, making it difficult to assess scale.
• As a subset focused on a single Class I railroad, it does not represent the complete North American rail network.

Provenance

Source

Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), U.S. Department of Transportation / Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS).

Collection Method

Derived from the North American Rail Network (NARN) Lines dataset.

Freshness

Last updated on March 1, 2025.

Geography

Covers all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Canada, and Mexico.