Southwest Chief

The Southwest Chief runs every day between Chicago and Los Angeles — 2,256 miles through eight states, in about 44 hours with two nights on board. On the way it calls at Kansas City, La Junta, Raton, Lamy for Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Flagstaff.

It is the heir to the Santa Fe Railway's Super Chief, which from 1936 was the railway's all-Pullman flagship between the same two cities. Amtrak took the train over on 1 May 1971, ran it as the Southwest Limited from 1974, and gave it back a Chief name on 28 October 1984.

What sets it apart is the way it goes west. Freight trains long ago moved to a flatter route; the Chief keeps to the Santa Fe's original line and at La Junta turns south along the old Santa Fe Trail over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains — through the tunnel at the top of Raton Pass, at 7,588 ft the highest point on the line, and over Glorieta Pass into the Rio Grande valley. Beyond Albuquerque come the mesas around Laguna, the Arizona plateau and the Mojave Desert.

Train 3 leaves Chicago Union Station at 13:30 and runs west across the Illinois prairie by Naperville, Mendota and Galesburg. In the late afternoon it crosses the Mississippi into Iowa on the Santa Fe's 1927 swing bridge at Fort Madison, then turns south-west across Missouri to Kansas City, reached at 21:37. The Kansas wheat country — Topeka, Newton, Hutchinson, Dodge City — passes in the night.

The Santa Fe Trail

Morning comes on the high plains of south-eastern Colorado. At La Junta the train turns south and follows the route of the Santa Fe Trail to Trinidad, then climbs grades of up to 3.5 % to the tunnel at the top of Raton Pass, 7,588 ft — the highest point of the whole journey, just inside New Mexico. Down the other side the line crosses open ranch country under Wagon Mound, past a handful of Santa Fe-era semaphore signals still at work, to Las Vegas.

Glorieta and the Rio Grande

From Las Vegas the train climbs again, over Glorieta Pass in the southern Sangre de Cristos, where Union troops turned back a Confederate advance in March 1862, and descends to Lamy, the station for Santa Fe. It runs on past Los Cerrillos to the Rio Grande and Albuquerque in mid-afternoon. West of the city it rejoins the freight main line, passes Laguna and crosses the Continental Divide to Gallup before evening.

Arizona and the Mojave

Westbound, the Arizona plateau — Winslow, Flagstaff and Kingman — passes in the evening and the night, and the Mojave Desert and Barstow in the small hours. After San Bernardino and Fullerton the train reaches Los Angeles Union Station at breakfast time on the third day. Eastbound the pattern is reversed: the desert and Arizona are crossed at night, and New Mexico and Raton Pass by day.

The train itself

The Southwest Chief is made up of Amtrak's double-deck Superliner cars — sleeping cars, a dining car, a Sightseer Lounge with windows curving into the roof, and coaches — usually behind two locomotives: GE P42DC "Genesis" diesels or Siemens ALC-42 Chargers. The Superliner design itself was based on the Santa Fe's own double-deck Hi-Level cars from the El Capitan, one of the two trains the Chief replaced.

The Southwest Chief runs once a day in each direction, all year. Westbound, train 3 leaves Chicago at 13:30 and reaches Los Angeles at 08:12 two days later, 44 hours 42 minutes on. Eastbound, train 4 leaves Los Angeles at 16:55 and reaches Chicago at 15:29 two days later, 44 hours 34 minutes on. Every seat and room is reserved.

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

Good to know:

• Raton Pass by day either way, for most of the year. Westbound, Trinidad to Raton is between about 08:10 and 09:10; eastbound, 16:20 to 17:20. Glorieta and the run to Albuquerque are in daylight in both directions too.
• Arizona is a westbound sight, and a summer one. Westbound, Gallup to Flagstaff runs through the evening; eastbound it is crossed in the small hours.
• 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 3 leaving Chicago at 13:30 but reaching Los Angeles at 07:27, after 43 hours 57 minutes. Check your own date.
• Santa Fe is a shuttle from Lamy. Amtrak's timetable shows a shuttle meeting the train daily for Santa Fe and Los Alamos; Amtrak asks for advance reservations.
• Leave slack. The train runs mostly on BNSF freight lines, 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 Southwest Chief 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 Los Angeles on Wednesday 6 January 2027, gave Coach from $137, a Roomette at $912, a Bedroom at $2,244 and a Family Room at $1,891 — 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 Los Angeles straight through uses one of the ten. The pass is valid for 120 days from purchase, and each segment has to be booked through Amtrak before you board.

For the Southwest Chief alone it is not worth buying. Coach from Chicago to Los Angeles sampled at $137, well under the pass price. It pays when the Chief is one leg of a bigger loop — breaking the ride at Raton, Lamy and Flagstaff, say, and then heading north on the Coast Starlight — and only if you are happy to sit up for the nights on board. The pass does not cover Amtrak's Thruway buses numbered 7000 to 7999, which includes the Lamy shuttle to Santa Fe.

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

The Southwest Chief runs once a day, so breaking the journey means a night off the train and a new reservation for the next day's departure. Chicago has its own card on the California Zephyr's page and Los Angeles on the Coast Starlight's; the places below are the ones this line has to itself, from east to west. For the Grand Canyon, Amtrak points riders from Flagstaff to connecting buses for the Grand Canyon Railway at Williams.

Three places to break the ride, and all three were Fred Harvey hotels on the Santa Fe Railway's route: the Castañeda beside the station at Las Vegas, La Fonda on the plaza in Santa Fe, a shuttle ride from Lamy, and La Posada beside the tracks at Winslow.

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