Our Experience: Riding Amtrak Across the US on the Empire Builder How to Visit Glacier National Park from Amtrak Stations.How to Make a Stopover on Empire Builder.Stations to Momentarily Step Off the Empire Builder.Timetable & Schedule of Amtrak Empire Builder.Best Time of Year to take Empire Builder.Differences Between Eastbound vs Westbound.

Left Side or Right Side of Empire Builder.

Where to Sit: Booking Upper or Lower Level Amtrak Seats.

How to Upgrade on Amtrak from Coach to Roomette.

Different Seat Options on Amtrak Empire Builder.

How to Get the Lowest Priced Amtrak Tickets.

🚂 What It’s Like to Travel Across USA on Amtrak Empire Builder This post recounts our rail trip across the US to give a balanced look at what it’s really like, while further providing an Amtrak Empire Builder review and travel tips for anyone considering this classic rail journey. So we boarded in Chicago to take the entire length of this train trip to judge for ourselves. Many of those passengers remark the Empire Builder line is the most scenic Amtrak train route.

We decided to join these slow travelers on what has become Amtrak’s most popular long-distance train route, with nearly a half-million passengers taking the Empire Builder each year (433,373 riders in 2019, source: Amtrak FY 19 Ridership Report). (Map source:, an interactive map that you can use to zoom in and out.)īut there remains a sect of society with a preference to instead pursue this classic rail journey, traveling across America’s most Northern states over the course of three days, rather than the 5-hour flight zipping above the US. This 2,206-mile rail trip across the US can easily be accomplished by flight in one-tenth of the time and for about the same price. Yet now well into the 21st century, it’s a time when the Amtrak Empire Builder is a wildly inefficient way to travel from Chicago to Seattle. The final call for passengers was one of the many morsels of Americana to enjoy when crossing the US by train on this Empire Builder route that’s been in use for nearly 100 years. For us, that holler from deep in the lungs proved to be a most appropriate welcome as we boarded those shiny silver train cars that had just rolled into Chicago’s ornate Union Station. After stepping onto the Amtrak Empire Builder, we soon found out the crew really does belt out an “all aboard” call as the train is departing.

Empire builder timetable 2021