Looking for good railroad maps or CD

I am not sure where to post this topic...it really should go into the Railroad History section, but the closest heading would probably be photography, which is not specifically related. Hope it's ok to post it here.

I have been looking, for some time, for a dealer for large wall maps, showing all historical railroad lines in both the US and Canada. With a wall map, I would like to see something with color-coded traces, showing most all railroads, in the US and Canada, from the turn of the last century up until, at least, the advent of Amtrak in the early 1970s. The maps should, then, have explantion boxes for linking the color coded routes to the actual railroad. I would like, primarily, maps of passenger train routes/companies, but also interested in freight lines.

Also, I am interested in purchasing a CD containing the same information, with route breakdowns..going from national maps, to state, province or region, then to local maps showing the various rail lines. Again, I am primary interested in passenger routes, but freight as well.

I have searched the internet..but I am not impressed with the type of material I have, at least up until now, come across. A lot of the maps and CD's offered don't seem to have really good graphics, or are regional only.

Can anyone give me some sources for the purchase of wall maps and CD's which would fulfill my interest?

Thanks, Richard

The only maps that you will find are what you see just normal railroad maps. If you are looking for passenger routes I would get the timetable from Amtrak and one for VIA Rail Canada. If you want Fraght Maps you'll have to get maps for each of the railroads in the U.S. and Canada.
For a detailed map get the SVP Railroad Atlas which is broken down by regions showing every line past and presant along with the owners reporting marks, Outher things in the book show locatons of and mile post for every village, town, and city even the defect detectors, yards, and passenger stations are shown.
If you want Just fraght maps you'll have to buy maps for each of the major railroads that are runing today.
For even more detailed maps that show every little thing look for railroad maintaince program books these books are so detailed its nuts!! I have a Conrail one that covers all of New York State in 1980 detail shows: Roads & Highway crossing locations, underground utliteys, bridges, leaghts of sideings, signal tower locations, defect detector locations, rail profile, number of ties, spikes, undercutting profile, railgirndeing profile, dranage percentage, building locations, divtion phone numbers, Police and fire department phone numbers, You name it its there. I even reseved the Canadian Pacific main line track profile which covers Niagra Falls, Sudbury to Montreal high speed main lines. In all both books cover a mile post by mile post report.

The only publication mapping historic lines in detail is the "Atlas of North American Railroads" multi-volume series from SPV (www.spv.co.uk). They have just finished the USA and Canada Maritime and are revising the earlier editions to include interurbans. The interurban info is unique, I think. Downsides: no color and A4 page size.