Colors were sampled from official rapid transit diagrams* of every system in the world and charted in several ways to explore how each city has used them to color code each line or service. Rapid transit systems include subways, metros, undergrounds, railways, etc. operating frequently in urban areas.
Make your own custom map of the World, United States, Europe, and 50+ different maps. Color an editable map and download it for free to use in your project. When a map is created for a metro, subway, or raid transit system, colors are assigned to each line for identification.
After creating the Global Subway Spectrum a few years ago which catalogs all these colors, I wanted to revisit the idea and create something new with updated data that transit fans like myself would enjoy hanging on their wall. The result is Colors of the Rails, colors. Discover America's extensive railroad network with our interactive US railroad maps - the most comprehensive rail USA map available online.
Our advanced mapping tool provides detailed access to all major American rail network map data, including freight and passenger rail systems across the United States. General Color Notes This page details the colors utilized on this website as provided by official sources, arranged by city. Only cities with published and easily accessible color schemes are listed here.
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This page is explicitly a data bank containing publicly available information. The contents of this page may become out of date at any time. Bus maps - which often have far more routes than rapid transit maps - are increasingly using colour to denote service type (regular, express, limited, etc.) rather than individual routes, which greatly reduces the number of colours required.
Metro Brewer 🔉 Next stop MetroBrewer! 🚉. This package compiles metro and train lines color palettes from different cities around the world. Incorporate to your graphs and other visualizations the distinctive colors of your favorite city's metro! Metro lines, inherently distinct, offer significant utility in categorical visualizations.
Moreover, the familiarity with the metro map. This color coding was so successful that, beyond the branches of the Green Line, if you were to ask a Boston native where to grab the Cambridge-Dorchester Line they would look at you like a tourist. Alternatively, you can spot a Boston tourist (or any tourist really) in a city like New York when they misidentify the 4 train as the Green Line.
Welcome to Colour-Rail The Photo Library for Archive Transport Photographs Updated 15th October 2025 165,887 images online. A few years later, in 2014, he became Regional Transportation Authority's map contractor, in addition to his map work for tourism, publishing, and real estate. According to the CTA's 2018 press release, the "goal of naming rail lines by color was to make the rail system more user-friendly, particularly for new or occasional riders, out.