The Southwest Chief (formerly the Southwest Limited and Super Chief) is a long-distance passenger train operated by Amtrak on a route between Chicago and Los Angeles through the Midwest and Southwest via Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff mostly on the BNSF's Southern Transcon, but branches off between Albuquerque and Kansas City via the Topeka, La Junta, Raton, and Glorieta Subdivision. Amtrak bills the route as one of its most scenic, with views of the Painted Desert and the Red Cliffs of Sedona, as well as the plains of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado.
During fiscal year 2024, the Southwest Chief carried 261,485 passengers, a 3% increase from FY2023. However, this is a 22.7% decrease from its pre-COVID-19 pandemic ridership of 338,180 passengers in FY2019. The route grossed in revenue during FY 2016, a 3.8% decrease from FY 2017.
History
The Southwest Chief is the successor to the Super Chief, which was inaugurated in 1936 as the flagship train of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF). For most of its existence, it was "all-Pullman", carrying sleeping cars only. The Santa Fe merged the Super Chief with its all-coach counterpart, the El Capitan, in 1958. The merged train was known as the Super Chief/El Capitan, but retained the train numbers used by the Super Chief, 17 westbound and 18 eastbound.
When Amtrak was created, Santa Fe was chosen as one of the railroads to participate in the formation of the new company. Initially, ATSF wanted to retain operation of its famed Chiefs. However, any railroad that opted out of Amtrak would have been required to operate all of its passenger routes until at least 1976. This led to Santa Fe turning over all the operation of its main passenger services to Amtrak on May 1, 1971. Some services such as the San Francisco Chief which ran between Chicago and the Bay Area via Wichita, Amarillo, Belen Cutoff, Barstow and Bakersfield were discontinued by Santa Fe the day before the transfer of the Super Chief/El Capitan operations to Amtrak. The prospect of being left alone with the operation of its less successful routes soon led ATSF to definitively cease the services that still remained under its operations, withdrawing completely from the passenger trains business.
Initially Amtrak retained the Super Chief/El Capitan names with Santa Fe's permission. From June 11 to September 10, 1972, Amtrak operated the Chief, a second Chicago–Los Angeles train along the same route, reviving the name of another notable Chicago–Los Angeles sleeper train operated by the Santa Fe. This was the only occasion on which Amtrak ran a second train to duplicate a long-distance service outside the New York–Florida corridor. Amtrak dropped the El Capitan designation on April 19, 1973, truncating only the name to Super Chief, and on March 7, 1974, the Santa Fe directed Amtrak to stop using the Super Chief and Texas Chief (another notable service originally operated by Santa Fe and which between Chicago and Newton, Kansas shared route with the Super Chief/El Capitan. Amtrak also took over that service in 1971, although after complaints filed by Santa Fe, it was renamed Lone Star.) names due to a perceived reduction in the quality of services, after the Amtrak takeover. In October 1980 the Southwest Limited began running with the new coaches Superliner I built by Pullman-Standard, being the fourth of Amtrak's western long-distance trains to be equipped with the new coaches (already running with such cars were the San Francisco Zephyr, Desert Wind and Empire Builder). On November 30, 1981, Amtrak replaced the ex-Super Chief "Pleasure Dome" and "Hi-Level" cars on the Southwest Limited with new superliners, completing the replacement of the original old Super Chief cars with the new cars. The old Hi-Level coaches used on the El Capitan inspired the design for the Superliners. Santa Fe managers, impressed by the design of the new Superliners, permitted Amtrak to restore the name Chief to the train, and Amtrak renamed it the Southwest Chief on October 28, 1984. In September 1993, the Chief was the first of Amtrak's western long-distance trains to receive the new Superliner II sleeping coaches built by Bombardier Transportation.
In 1979, the Southwest Chief/Limited route between Kansas City and Emporia was shifted in order to maintain service to Topeka and Lawrence, which would otherwise have lost service when the Texas Chief/Lone Star was discontinued. Until the 1979 realignment via Topeka, service operated via the direct route between Kansas City and Emporia, via Olathe, Gardner and Ottawa.
1990s
The western portion of the Pasadena Subdivision was converted to the Gold Line in the 1990s, requiring the Southwest Chief to be rerouted to the San Bernardino Subdivision between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. Eastbound service was rerouted on November 28, 1993, replacing the stops at and with . Westbound service was rerouted on January 15, 1994. An additional stop at was added on April 29, 2002.
Prior to 1996, the Southwest Chief operated in Illinois between Chicago and via the ATSF's Chillicothe Subdivision, stopping at , , and Chillicothe. Following the merger between Burlington Northern and Santa Fe that gave birth to BNSF in 1995, a connector track was built near Cameron, southwest of Galesburg, which would allow freight and passenger trains to transfer from the Chillicothe Subdivision to the BN Mendota Subdivision, the former Chicago and Aurora Railroad / Chicago, Burlington & Quincy - CB&Q tracks. The Chief was rerouted by the Mendota Subdivision through , , and to Galesburg, a route shared with the California Zephyr long distance service, and the Amtrak Midwest Illinois Zephyr and Carl Sandburg services. Southwest Chief service to Joliet, Streator and Chillicothe was dropped as part of the realignment, although Joliet continues to see Amtrak service from other trains. The Chief realignment through the Cameron Connector to the Mendota Sub tracks caused Amtrak to concentrate all of its Galesburg operations in the present station, and the station building along the former Santa Fe line was closed and later demolished.
In January 1994, the Southwest Chief was rerouted between San Bernardino and Los Angeles onto the Santa Fe Third District via Fullerton and Riverside. Previously, it served Pasadena and Pomona via the Santa Fe Pasadena Subdivision, which was closed to all through traffic following damage to a bridge over the eastbound lanes of Interstate 210 in Arcadia during the Northridge Earthquake.
Between 1997 and 1998, Amtrak operated the Southwest Chief in conjunction with the Washington–Chicago Capitol Limited. The two trains used the same Superliner equipment sets and passengers traveling on both trains could remain aboard during the layover in Chicago. Originally announced in 1996, Amtrak planned to call this through service National Chief and assign it its own numbers (15/16), but the name and numbers were never used. Amtrak dropped the practice with its May 1998 timetable.
2010s
The Southwest Chief was one of five routes studied for possible performance improvements by Amtrak in FY 2012.
The part of the Southwest Chief's route in western Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and northeastern New Mexico faced uncertainty throughout the 2010s.
In 2012, BNSF informed Amtrak that they had to assume part of the maintenance costs for the section of the line between La Junta and Lamy (Raton and Glorieta Subdivisions), justifying the near-zero freight traffic over it, if they wanted to keep running passenger rail over the route.BNSF, by eliminating almost all of the freight traffic running on the Raton and Glorieta Subs and rerouting it to the Southern Transcon, left the Southwest Chief as the only train using that section of the route.Colorado State Legislature, Preserve & Expand Amtrak Interstate Rail Service p2 Section 1(b)(c) BNSF also said that they would be lowering the track class on the portion of the Southwest Chief's route between Hutchinson and La Junta from Class IV to Class III and decreasing the passenger train speed limit from to .
In return, BNSF proposed rerouting the Southwest Chief from the affected sections of track to its Southern Transcon via Wichita, Amarillo, and Clovis—the same route once used by the San Francisco Chief. To avoid a reroute, Amtrak sought help from the affected states—Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.Fred W. Frailey, "Minus its backbone, Amtrak makes a tempting target," Trains, August 2010, 18. The states eventually contributed money toward rebuilding and rehabilitating the tracks—much of it obtained from federal transportation grants—and the route was not changed.
However, this same part of the Southwest Chief's route was threatened again in 2018 when it became the focal point of a struggle to determine whether to continue Amtrak as a national network or to operate regional stand-alone networks.Joseph A. Boardman, "Where is the public input? Where is the transparency?" Railway Age, May 10, 2018. The issue arose when Amtrak introduced new requirements for the third renewal grant and raised previously undiscussed technical issues.Jim Souby, "Amtrak gets big boost from Congress, grant from DOT, reviews long-distance trains," ColoRail Passenger, Issue 84, 2018, 5. A letter dated May 31, 2018, co-signed by 11 Senators, condemned the action and urged providing the match. In an open letter, former Amtrak President and CEO Joseph H. Boardman said, "The Southwest Chief issue is the battleground whose outcome will determine the fate of American’s national interconnected rail passenger network".
In June 2018, Amtrak announced that it was considering the replacement of rail service along the Kansas portion of the Southwest Chief with Amtrak Thruway buses between Albuquerque and Dodge City, where train service east to Chicago would resume.Ben Kuebrich, "Amtrak May End Passenger Rail Service In West Kansas. Moran: 'Amtrak Is Not Doing Its Job'", KCUR Senators in the affected area succeeded in offering an amendment to a funding bill. Per a press release from the office of co-sponsor Senator Jerry Moran, "This amendment would provide resources for maintenance and safety improvements along the Southwest Chief route and would compel Amtrak to fulfill its promise of matching funding for the successful TIGER IX discretionary grant ... In addition, this amendment would effectively reverse Amtrak’s decision to substitute rail service with bus service over large segments of the route through FY2019".Senate Approves Moran, Udall Amendment to Maintain Southwest Chief Train Services Senator Jerry Moran official website August 1, 2018
2020s
In February 2020, USDOT granted $225,000 toward studying a Southwest Chief spur train service that would run to Colorado Springs, Colorado, via Pueblo.
In May 2022, the Missouri General Assembly approved $1 million of state funds to establish a Southwest Chief infill station in Carrollton, between the Kansas City and La Plata stations. If approved by the governor, the state funds would have to be matched by local agencies.
Incidents On October 2, 1979, the Southwest Limited derailed at Lawrence, Kansas. Of the 30 crew and 147 passengers on board, 2 were killed and 69 were injured. The cause was excessive speed on a curve. Underlying causes included the engineer's unfamiliarity with the route and speed restriction signage having been removed during track repairs.