May 17, 2023: Arriving in Chicago

As sleeping on the train goes, this was not one of my better nights. I could sleep in coach fairly easily as a child, but since I’ve been an adult it’s become pretty much impossible.

The sun rose somewhere around Waterloo, Ind., as we spent the morning traversing the northern part of the state. Later we pulled into Elkhart, Ind.—town of more than 50,000 that had an old historic-looking depot. By comparison, the next stop was the much larger city of South Bend, and its station was a rather nondescript shack-like blue building at the edge of town.

The ride from there into Chicago was somewhat slow, as we entered the busy railyards surrounding the city. As we got closer to Lake Michigan we passed several factories, then made our way deeper into the Chicago suburbs. We rolled past Guaranteed Rate Field, the home of the White Sox, then went over the Chicago River into Amtrak’s large maintenance yards downtown. 


As we headed through the yard, I caught a glimpse of one of the newer trainsets Amtrak has been using on its midwestern routes recently.

Immediately after heading through the yard, we entered the cavernous confines of Chicago Union Station. We actually reached our destination nearly 20 minutes early, although this is based on Amtrak’s timetable which has considerable padding in the schedule.

It felt good to step off the train, both because of the fresh air and also because up to that point I hadn’t gotten a glimpse of the entire train consist, since we had boarded from the back in D.C.

Chicago Union Station is a grand old terminal that dates to 1925. Although it does not have the high ceiling of Washington Union Station, the main hall of this station definitely has a ‘wow factor’ to it. It also wins brownie points because of the nice old wooden benches for passengers – something its counterparts in D.C. and New York ought to consider. On this Wednesday the station was bustling with passengers, and there were even representatives from various surrounding counties and states that had set up shop in the main hall.



My second leg of the journey to Los Angeles will begin tomorrow afternoon. Since I’m in a sleeping car on that part of the trip, I’ll have a chance to use Amtrak’s Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago!

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