The City of New Orleans is an Amtrak passenger train which operates on an overnight schedule between Chicago and New Orleans. The train is a successor to the Illinois Central Railroad's Panama Limited. The train operates along a route that has been served in one form or another for over a century. The Panama Limited originally ran from 1911 to 1971, though the IC ran Chicago-New Orleans trains as early as the 1900s. Additional corridor service is provided between Chicago and Carbondale, Illinois–the northern leg of the route–by the Illini and Saluki. The original City of New Orleans began in 1947 as part of the Illinois Central Railroad, and was the longest daylight run in the United States. The daylight train under that name ran through 1971, when it was moved to an overnight schedule as the Panama Limited. The present name was brought back in 1981, still on an overnight schedule. During fiscal year 2018, the train carried 237,781 passengers, a decrease of 6.9% from FY2017. In FY2016, the train had a total revenue of $18,706,915, a 3.7% decrease from FY2015. The train is the subject of the bittersweet 1971 song "City of New Orleans", written by Steve Goodman.
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