The California Zephyr has a glamorous history with many different railroads, from Union Pacific to Rio Grande. Most of the route that the train takes is through picturesque areas of Colorado and through the mountain ranges between California and Nevada. The original plan for Amtrak was to use the route it originally took between San Francisco and Chicago but it ran into difficulty due to the fact that the Rio Grande did not want to join Amtrak in fear of loss of certain entities. 1983 brought Amtrak the route they had been wanting and the California Zephyr was reborn. The California Zephyr was originally the San Francisco Zephyr and Denver Zephyr, the San Francisco Zephyr would travel from San Francisco to Denver where passengers would board the Denver Zephyr and continue onto Chicago. The route of the California Zephyr is 2,438 miles and takes about two days to travel either way. The train is one of the longest journeys you can take with Amtrak, while the longest one in North America is VIA rails Canadian which travels from Vancouver to Toronto and is 86 hours or 3.5 days long compared to the Zephyrs 51hr. 20min. journey. The train leaves Emeryville daily and by late that evening it is already in Nevada closing in on Utah, where the train stops shortly after midnight in Salt Lake City and continues on to Colorado which is a full day travel going through Moffat Tunnel which cuts through the Continental Divide and that evening the train arrives in Denver for a small cleaning and continues on through the night passing through Nebraska and Iowa. The next morning you arrive into the great state of Illinois where you make a few stops before arriving into Chicago in the early afternoon. The train is pulled by two P42 engines and behind it follow a baggage car, one transition sleeper for the staff, two sleeper cars, a Superliner Diner car, a Superliner Sightseer lounge car, and three coach cars. I will be traveling on the California Zephyr at the end of May and will be writing about the service and posting many pictures of the gorgeous scenery that entails this magnificent train and route.
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