Empire Builder or Illinois Zephyr
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
| Empire Builder | Illinois Zephyr | |
|---|---|---|
| Endpoints | Chicago Union Station to Seattle | Quincy to Chicago Union Station |
| Duration, end to end | 46 h 24 m | 4 h 21 m |
| Frequency | Daily | Daily |
| Trains | 7 westbound, 8 eastbound | 380 eastbound, 383 westbound |
| Named stretches with a cited source | 9 | 3 |
| Shows | Wildlife, Mountains, Prairie, National parks, Pacific coast, Big rivers | Big cities |
| Headline stretch | Upper Mississippi River | South Branch of the Chicago River |
| Headline stretch in daylight | westbound: dark, 9:30 p.m.; eastbound: daylight, 10:13 a.m. | eastbound: daylight, 10:23 a.m.; westbound: daylight Mar to Sep; dusk Oct; dark Nov to Feb, 6:04 p.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.