Southwest Chief

Heir to the Santa Fe Super Chief, “Train of the Stars”: crests 2,388 m Raton Pass on the old Santa Fe Trail.

Amtrak’s south-western flagship follows the old Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe main line, a route once garnished with Fred Harvey’s civilising trackside hotels. The middle day is the epic: Kansas grain elevators give way to the Sangre de Cristo peaks, adobe New Mexico and the squeeze through Apache Canyon, where the double-deck cars all but brush the rock. On the final morning the train coasts down Cajon Pass into the Los Angeles basin.

Along the way

• Mississippi crossing at Fort Madison
• Kansas grain elevators
• Raton Pass — 2,388 m
• Apache Canyon squeeze
• Gallup’s red mesas
• Cajon Pass descent

How this line was checked

• Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 4720714 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 36 m of them
• Checked against OpenStreetMap: 99.8% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 8 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 Southwest Chief to Chicago
• Wikipedia has an article for this line

Questions and answers

How long is the Southwest Chief?

The Southwest Chief runs 3,645 km from Chicago to Los Angeles.

How long does the Southwest Chief take?

The fastest scheduled journey is 43 h for the 3,645 km. That is an average of 85 km/h end to end. The line's top service speed is 145 km/h.

Who runs the Southwest Chief?

Amtrak, with Superliner.

How old is the Southwest Chief?

The line has been in service since 1936. That is the year the atlas dates it from: for a modern brand running over an older railway, it is the railway's date, not the brand's.

How high does the Southwest Chief climb?

2,388 m above sea level at its highest point.

View on the world railway map →

Read more on Wikipedia ↗