City of New Orleans 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
| City of New Orleans | Empire Builder | |
|---|---|---|
| Endpoints | New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal to Chicago Union Station | Chicago Union Station to Seattle |
| Duration, end to end | 19 h 30 m | 46 h 24 m |
| Frequency | Daily | Daily |
| Trains | 58 northbound, 59 southbound | 7 westbound, 8 eastbound |
| Named stretches with a cited source | 6 | 9 |
| Shows | Big rivers, Big cities, Gulf coast, Prairie, Wildlife | Wildlife, Mountains, Prairie, National parks, Pacific coast, Big rivers |
| Headline stretch | Lake Pontchartrain and the bayou | Upper Mississippi River |
| Headline stretch in daylight | northbound: daylight, 2:18 p.m.; southbound: daylight, 2:59 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.