California Zephyr

The Sightseer Lounge is the whole argument: wraparound glass, docent commentary through Colorado, strangers trading wine and life stories as the walls of rock close in. West of Denver the train winds up the Front Range and slips beneath the Continental Divide, then shadows the Colorado River for hours through gorges no road reaches. A desert night across Utah and Nevada ends with a slow, pine-scented crawl over the Sierra crest and the drop to San Francisco Bay.

Stations

1. 0 kmChicago Union Station +14
2. 45 kmNaperville +2
3. 167 kmPrinceton +2
4. 260 kmGalesburg +2
5. 329 kmBurlington
6. 374 kmMount Pleasant
7. Show 24 more stations

   1. 448 kmOttumwa
   2. 578 kmOsceola
   3. 631 kmCreston
   4. 803 kmOmaha
   5. 891 kmLincoln
   6. 1,046 kmHastings
   7. 1,134 kmHoldrege
   8. 1,258 kmMcCook
   9. 1,541 kmFort Morgan
   10. 1,665 kmUnion Station +2
   11. 1,762 kmFraser-Winter Park +1
   12. 1,782 kmGranby +1
   13. 1,954 kmGlenwood Springs +1
   14. 2,094 kmGrand Junction +1
   15. 2,261 kmGreen River +1
   16. 2,374 kmHelper +1
   17. 2,492 kmProvo +1
   18. 2,562 kmSalt Lake City +1
   19. 2,984 kmElko
   20. 3,206 kmWinnemucca
   21. 3,486 kmReno
   22. 3,540 kmTruckee
   23. 3,640 kmColfax
   24. 3,696 kmRoseville +1
8. 3,724 kmSacramento Valley Station +2
9. 3,746 kmDavis +2
10. 3,816 kmMartinez +3
11. 3,847 kmRichmond +2
12. 3,859 kmEmeryville +3

The stations OpenStreetMap lists for this service, in order, with the distance along the line as drawn here. A train may skip some of them. A +N after a station: N other routes on this map stop or end there, and the map draws it as a station where lines meet.

Along the way

• Mississippi crossing at Burlington
• Front Range climb out of Denver
• Moffat Tunnel under the Divide
• Glenwood Canyon river miles
• Ruby Canyon into Utah
• Sierra crest above Donner Lake

How this line was checked

• Checked against OpenStreetMap: 99.7% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 19 m); the longest stretch away from it is 5.5 km
• Checked against the running timetable via Amtrak: our line sits 0.1 km from the shape of the California Zephyr to Chicago
• Wikipedia has an article for this line
• See for yourself: open this line on the map with OpenStreetMap's own railway drawn underneath it

Questions and answers

Read more on Wikipedia ↗