Chicago Amtrak Directions

Chicago’s Union Station is the most connected rail station in the United States. It is a double stub-end terminal, meaining that trains can come from either the north or the south.¹ As it turns out, all Amtrak lines, except for the Empire Builder and its subsets, come to the south end.

A map of the United States, showing places accessible to the north in red, and to the south in blue — States accessible to the north (red) and south (blue) from Chicago Union Station. Illinois has stations to both directions.

Most of this is due to Lake Michigan. Any direction to the east has to go around the south shore, including Michigan to the northeast. Thus, the north side has only two cardinal directions (north and northwest), whereas the south has the other six: everywhere from California to Massachusetts.²

Most states are accessible from Chicago. Two (South Dakota and Wyoming) have no stations whatsoever. Alabama and the New England states have only regional access. And the other two are obviously not reachable by rail.

There are a couple of under-utilized through-running platforms. Many rail users think that more through-running is a necessary improvement. ↩︎
You can find the detailed alignments from Andrew Lynch’s beatiful “Chicago Track Map,” last modified in 2025. ↩︎