Empire Builder

The Empire Builder runs every day between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest — 2,205 miles to Seattle or 2,256 to Portland, through eight states in about 46 hours and two nights on board. It is one train as far as Spokane, where it divides in the small hours: trains 7 and 8 run to and from Seattle, trains 27 and 28 to and from Portland. It is Amtrak's busiest long-distance route, and it runs in January as it does in July.

The name is James J. Hill's nickname. Hill built the Great Northern Railway across the northern plains to Puget Sound — the one privately funded transcontinental railroad that succeeded — and the railway named its flagship after him when it launched the train in 1929.

Its great set piece is Glacier National Park. The Great Northern crossed the Continental Divide at Marias Pass in 1891, lobbied for the park that was created in 1910 and built its first hotels, and its tracks still mark the park's southern boundary. Either side of that come the Mississippi bluffs of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the long Montana Hi-Line, and then — depending on the section — the Cascade Range or the Columbia River Gorge.

Train 7 leaves Chicago Union Station at 15:05 and runs north on the old Milwaukee Road main line to Milwaukee, then west across Wisconsin through Columbus, the stop for Madison, and Wisconsin Dells. At La Crosse it crosses the Mississippi into Minnesota and follows the river north through the evening — past Winona and round Lake Pepin, where the valley widens into a lake 22 miles long — to cross it once more on the lift bridge at Hastings and reach Saint Paul just before midnight.

The northern plains

Minnesota's lakes and forests pass in the night, and day two opens on the flat farmland of eastern North Dakota: Fargo and Grand Forks before dawn, then the line across Devils Lake, raised in two stages in 2012 and 2013 to keep the track above the rising water. West of Minot the train crosses the Gassman Coulee trestle, 1,792 ft long and 117 ft high, and after Williston, busy with workers from the Bakken oilfield, it enters Montana.

What follows is the Hi-Line: an afternoon of open plains beside US Highway 2, through Wolf Point, Glasgow, Malta and Havre, and then Shelby and Cut Bank as the Rocky Mountain Front rises out of the plain.

Glacier

At East Glacier Park, the Great Northern's 1912 depot faces the lodge it built opposite. From here the line climbs to Marias Pass, 5,213 ft — the lowest crossing of the Continental Divide between Canada and central New Mexico — on the park's southern boundary. West of the pass it drops beside the Middle Fork of the Flathead River, the park on the far bank, through Essex and West Glacier to Whitefish. Westbound this all happens in the evening; eastbound the train is in Glacier country between about half past seven and half past ten in the morning.

To the Pacific

Beyond Whitefish the line runs through the 7-mile Flathead Tunnel, built in 1970 when Libby Dam flooded the old route, and on through Idaho's panhandle to Spokane, where the train divides. The Seattle section, with the dining car, runs by Wenatchee and Leavenworth and goes under the Cascades in the 7.8-mile Cascade Tunnel, the longest railway tunnel in the United States, before following the Skykomish River down to Puget Sound at Everett and Seattle. The Portland section, with the Sightseer Lounge, runs south-west to Pasco and then along the Washington shore of the Columbia River Gorge to Portland.

The train itself

The Empire Builder is made up of Amtrak's double-deck Superliner cars — sleeping cars, a dining car, a Sightseer Lounge with its windows curving up into the roof, and coaches — behind a baggage car. It was the first Amtrak train to run entirely on Superliners, in October 1979, because the old steam-heated cars kept failing in the northern winter. The locomotives are Siemens ALC-42 Chargers, first put to work in revenue service on this train on 8 February 2022, and the older GE P42DC "Genesis" diesels they are replacing.

The Empire Builder runs once a day in each direction, all year. Westbound it leaves Chicago at 15:05 as one train and divides at Spokane: train 7 goes on to Seattle, train 27 to Portland. Eastbound, train 8 leaves Seattle at 16:55 and train 28 leaves Portland at 16:45; they join at Spokane and arrive in Chicago together at 16:45 on day three. Every seat and room is reserved.

All times below are local — the train crosses the Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones — and the day is counted from departure.

The Portland section, trains 27 and 28:

Good to know:

• Which way round for Glacier. Eastbound, the train runs from Whitefish to East Glacier Park between about 07:30 and 09:40 on the morning of day two. Westbound the same stretch comes in the evening, between about 19:50 and 22:20.
• East Glacier Park is a seasonal stop, open from mid-spring to mid-autumn; nearby Browning is served from October to April.
• The times move. Amtrak's timetable is generated for a single date rather than a season. The times above are from the one for 29 September 2026; a booking for 6 January 2027 showed train 7 with the same departure and arrival. Check your own date.
• Leave slack. The train runs mostly on freight railroads — BNSF west of the Twin Cities — so allow time before any onward connection.

Times as of September 2026, from Amtrak's published timetable for 29 September 2026. Confirm before travelling on amtrak.com (opens in a new tab).

Every seat and room on the Empire Builder is reserved, and fares move with demand rather than sitting on a published table. Sampling Amtrak's booking engine in September 2026 for one adult, Chicago to Seattle on Wednesday 6 January 2027, gave Coach from $117, a Roomette at $715, a Bedroom at $1,416 and a Family Room at $2,362 — each room price for the room, up to two adults (the Family Room adds two children). Book early, and book direct.

Coach is a reclining seat with the Sightseer Lounge and the café. A room adds a bed, an attendant and all meals in the dining car; the Bedroom adds its own washroom and shower. Fares checked September 2026 at amtrak.com (opens in a new tab); US dollars, one way.

Interrail and Eurail do not apply anywhere in the United States. The pass that does is Amtrak's own USA Rail Pass: $499 for 10 segments over 30 days, in Coach only — upgrades to a Roomette or Bedroom are not available on it. A segment is one boarding and one alighting, so riding Chicago to Seattle straight through uses one of the ten. The pass works only on Amtrak's Sale and Value fares, limits you to two round trips between the same pair of stations, and has a limited number of seats on each train, so each segment has to be booked through Amtrak before you board.

For the Empire Builder alone it is not worth buying. Coach from Chicago to Seattle sampled at $117, a quarter of the pass price. It pays when the Empire Builder is one leg of a bigger loop — breaking the ride at Whitefish and East Glacier Park, say, and then going on down the West Coast — and only if you are happy to sit up for the nights on board.

Checked September 2026 against amtrak.com/usa-rail-pass (opens in a new tab).

The Empire Builder runs once a day, so breaking the journey means a night off the train and a new reservation for the next day's departure — easy to arrange, since the train calls in each direction every day (East Glacier Park only from spring to autumn). Much of North Dakota and Minnesota passes in the dark in one direction or the other; the places below are the ones the timetable lets you see, from east to west, ending at whichever coast city your section runs to.

Two of these four were built by the Great Northern at the gates of Glacier, one at each end of the park, and both open only from late spring to early autumn — the Belton Chalet across the road from West Glacier station, Glacier Park Lodge opposite the depot at East Glacier Park. Either makes the obvious place to break the journey if the park is the reason you came. The other two are historic hotels in Saint Paul and at the Seattle end.

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