The maps on this site illustrate every passenger carrying railway, tramway and light railway in the nation. Each route is illustrated as a coloured line, and every station and stopping place is marked and named. The maps are NOT TO SCALE, but rather are drawn for clarity of reading.

To view the best known web-page detailing the timetable of an individual train route, simply click anywhere on the line of that route on the map. The official web page will be presented in a new browser window. To pan left, right, up or down to an adjacent map, click on the blue and white arrow pointing in the appropriate direction. The new map will be displayed in place of the current map. Alternatively you may select another map from the menu bar on the left of your screen. In some cases, a more detailed map of a specific area is available (eg major cities). This is indicated by a grey line around the region. To view the more detailed map, click inside the grey-lined region.

On each map, the journey time from the train origin is shown at selected stations. For each route, the frequency of service is also indicated as either the number of trains per week (colour-coded number), the number of trains per day (white number on colour-coded oval backround), or the number of trains per hour (a number of colour coded crosses). Where trains run on only certain days of the week, those days are indicated by colour-co-ordinated abbreviated day names and an arrow indicating the direction on which trains travel on that day.

Routes are differentiated by colours. Where operators use colours to indicate individual routes these colours are normally used, otherwise no special inference should be drawn from the use of any particular colour other than for tourist railways (see below). On metropolitan maps, the portion of the day or week during which the service operates (eg peak hours only, Mon-Fri only etc) is indicated by a degree of shading (eg dashed or cross-hatched) and is described on the local map legend. On some metropolitan maps, background colouring is used to denote fare zones, this is also described in the local map legends.

Links to web-sites detailing railway tourist features such as railway museums are indicated by underlined town names. Clicking on these town names will bring up that web page in a new browser window.

Tourist railways offering regularly or semi-regularly scheduled services are illustrated, and the mode of transportation whether steam, diesel, electric tram etc is indicated by colour coding indicated by the legend above.