To the list of things not to like about Penn Station — the ceilings are too low, there’s no natural light, the food is unmemorable, add this:  You can’t find a display map of Amtrak train routes.

From Penn Station, you can take the train from Penn Station to Montreal, or Miami, or Montana, but if you stand under the departure board, author Mark Ovenden says, “you can’t see a map for love nor money.”

Ovenden, wrote the book, Railway Maps of the World.  (See a slideshow of samples here). We’ve come down here to New York’s Penn station to evaluate the maps, because it’s a confluence of railway systems — Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and the MTA subway and Long Island Railroad. But we get stuck at the Amtrak, because we can’t find a map.

“In Europe,” Ovenden says, “in a lot of the big old stations, there were these great big tiled maps made from ceramic or painted on the wall. There’s one at Bordeaux for example, a massive map of the whole of the south of France.”

But in Penn station we find advertisements where we think a train map should be. For food, drink, even train travel. An Amtrak spokesman concedes there’s no wall map, but says you can find the information in other ways. Ovenden says that’s missing the point — and an opportunity. A map, he says, is an advertisement for travel. It pries open your mind.

“These wonderful display maps, really give you the sense of getting on board, the joy of the journey and the experience of traveling by train.”

At the Amtrak information desk, the agents hand do hand out booklets, with a map you can fold out. The map looks nice, a network of red lines stretching over a green background. It shows mountains, waterways, and cities. But then Ovenden lays the current map next to a train map from a hundred years ago.

I do a double-take. The lines on the old map are so thick that they’re barely discernable, one from the other. “We had almost a railway in almost every town and hamlet in the U.S.,” Ovenden says. “The old 1918 map looks like the blood vessels and the arteries and the veins of a country. It was the lifeblood of this country and when you look at it now, it’s just a skeleton.”

Through World War II, the railways were booming in the U.S  But after the war, the country made a choice. There was a huge infusion of federal funds into the interstate highway system. Air travel took off. Passenger rail was passé.  During parts of the day, Penn Station was almost empty. (For a related guest post by Mark Ovenden, click here.)

And, then, the station was torn down, replaced by a thicket of anonymous office towers, Madison Square Garden, and this crabbed space, which is so crabbed even the idea of an Amtrak map is foreign.

There is one part of the station that’s still alive — the public transport part. NJ Transit has a nice map — pretty, but smallish. But the MTA just nails it, with huge subway, bus, and Long Island rail maps. Ovenden’s energy ratchets up about ten notches when he sees these maps.” That’s what you need on the wall of the station, that’s fantastic! Look at it!”

We see tourists from France, China, and parts of the United States. These maps are about more than wayfinding.   They’re entertainment. They’re art. “Maps are part of the journey, and we shouldn’t forget that,” Ovenden tells me, as we wrap.

Maps are a vision of who we are, who we can be, and where we can go.