Night trains from Chicago
8 sleeper routes · United States
8 night trains serve Chicago in the World Train Map atlas, with sleeper routes to Portland, Seattle, Miami, San Antonio, New York, Boston, New Orleans. The longest is the Empire Builder (Portland section) at 3,609 km (≈ 46 h); the oldest service on this list has run since 1897. Board in the evening, wake up 3,609 km closer. Every route below links to its full story and the world railway map.
- Empire Builder (Portland section)
The Empire Builder’s Portland half: it leaves the Seattle cars at Spokane in the night and follows the Columbia River from Pasco down its gorge to Portland, a section Amtrak brought back in 1981.
Wikipedia ↗ - Empire Builder
Two nights tracing the Great Northern’s empire: skirting Glacier National Park along the Montana Rockies.
Wikipedia ↗ - Floridian
Born of a 2024 tunnel-works merger of two classic trains: one seat from Lake Michigan over the Alleghenies to Tampa and Miami, nearly two days aboard.
Wikipedia ↗ - Texas Eagle
A Missouri Pacific name kept alive from the Loop to the Alamo: with through sleepers to Los Angeles, one of the longest runs on the Amtrak map.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cardinal
Amtrak’s slowest way to Chicago and its prettiest: tri-weekly through Virginia horse country and the whitewater canyons of the New River Gorge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lake Shore Limited (Boston section)
The Lake Shore Limited’s Boston cars, split from the New York train at Albany–Rensselaer, cross the Berkshires by Pittsfield and Springfield on the old Boston and Albany; first run in 1975.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lake Shore Limited
Heir to the New York Central’s 1897 Water Level Route: up the Hudson at dusk, along Lake Erie by night, into Chicago with morning coffee.
Wikipedia ↗ - City of New Orleans
Immortalized in Steve Goodman’s 1971 song: overnight down the Mississippi Delta past Memphis, Yazoo City and the Louisiana bayous.
Wikipedia ↗
Photos via Wikimedia Commons; each route page credits the author & licence
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