Welcome to The Southwest Chief, Amtrak’s mid-southern route. As its name indicates, this route travels the southwest, in fact, going from it’s eastern starting point, Chicago, it travels 2,265 miles/3645 km. to Los Angeles, daily. If you want to relive the west as it stood 100 + years ago, when it was home to old west cattle trails, the Santa Fe Trail, Route 66 and home to many of the North American tribes, this is the train for you. You’ll pass through eight states, huge fields of crops, namely corn in the east and wheat in the mid section of the route, small towns, big cities, cattle ranches, a national park, and comes very close to other national parks such as Petrified Forest National Park and Grand Canyon National Park. We’ll also see snowy mountain passes, deep canyons, deserts, and the nation’s hottest town, Needles, CA. It’s quite a diversified trip and one packed with marvellous view,s so get comfy and let’s go scenery sight seeing.
Once again, we’re going to start off in that historic, center of the USA, Chicago and travel westward. Our train departs at a very reasonable 2:25 P.M., which allows for a good 5-6 hours of daylight in which to get the gist of how this section of the US has become known as ‘‘The Bread Basket of America’’. We’ll get through Illinois, Iowa and about half of Missouri before the sun dips to meet the earth and we witness a spectacular Prairie Sunset. The land here is the stuff of “Little House on the Prairie”, ‘‘The Grapes of Wrath’’, ‘‘Oh Pioneers’’, and ‘‘Antonia’’. Just looking at the vast fields where you can literally see for miles and miles. The lights go down as we arrive in Kansas City. Due to staff and equipment changes K.C. has a long stop-over. Plenty of time to admire the museum-like architecture of Union Station, Kansas City. Perhaps I’ll do a jump-off here one day as there is so much to see and do in KC. It’s alive with a great Jazz scene, mouth-watering barbecue and some very beautiful fountains, to say nothing of perhaps the greatest Football Fans this country has. It was no big surprise to me, then, when I passed through here in 2023, that there was a huge memorial to the ‘‘Chiefs’’ right in the middle of the station.
At Kansas City, we’ll cross over into Kansas, which we will pass through during the evening hours. In 2023, I stopped off at Dodge City for a day. There is a great reproduction of Old Dodge City from an 1880s perspective.
