Cardinal or Empire Builder
The two routes share one station, Chicago Union Station. The table lists what each shows and how long each takes; the route pages carry the full stretch tables.
Side by side
| Cardinal | Empire Builder | |
|---|---|---|
| Endpoints | Chicago Union Station to New York Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station | Chicago Union Station to Seattle |
| Duration, end to end | 27 h 33 m | 46 h 24 m |
| Frequency | 3 days a week | Daily |
| Trains | 50 eastbound, 51 westbound | 7 westbound, 8 eastbound |
| Named stretches with a cited source | 6 | 9 |
| Shows | Big rivers, Mountains, National parks, Big cities | Wildlife, Mountains, Prairie, National parks, Pacific coast, Big rivers |
| Headline stretch | New River Gorge | Upper Mississippi River |
| Headline stretch in daylight | eastbound: daylight, 9:56 a.m.; westbound: daylight May to Aug; dusk Sep; dark Oct to Feb; dusk Mar to Apr, 7:38 p.m. | westbound: dark, 9:30 p.m.; eastbound: daylight, 10:13 a.m. |
Duration, frequency, and daylight are computed from the Amtrak GTFS timetable (fetched 2026-10-15) for the representative trip in each direction; daylight is the phrase for the headline stretch, the highlighted row of each route page. Named stretches are counted from the cited route guides. How these are computed.