With more than 31 million customers and over 300 daily trains, keeping up with Amtrak isn’t easy. The US national passenger rail carrier, however, has taken a big leap forward into the 21st Century with the launch of the Track-A-Train service.

“Google Maps Engine is a cloud-based mapping solution that lets organizations create custom Google maps with their own data,” says Dylan Lorimer, product manager, Google Maps for Business. “A good example of this is Amtrak’s newly launched train locator tool.”

Track-A-Train is a brilliantly simple idea — a continental US map marked with stations (dots), trains (blue arrows) and numbers in purple (clusters of trains). You can click to zoom in on individual trains to show train speed, next station and on-time status.

Two things Track-A-Train doesn’t do, however, is offer live updates (i.e. you can’t watch a train move on the map) and, unlike most Google Maps, you can’t zoom in/out using gestures.

Nevertheless, Track-A-Train is brilliant…

What’s your take?

Related Posts:
— Amtrak for iOS 1.5 Supports iPhone 5, Boosts Train Status Reporting
— Amtrak getting onboard with iPhone tickets
— Review: Amtrak for iPhone pulls into the App Store
— Refurbished iPad mini, $279; iPad 3, $359; iPad 4, $419*
— Refurbished 128GB iPad 4 from $679