Looking at the entire map of the stations on the route, it's interesting to note only two of them between St. Louis/New Orleans and the west coast. As usual, that vast part of the nation is shown to be of very little regard to Amtrak. Where I live, the closest Amtrak station has one eastward and one westward train scheduled there per day, and that "day" is actually in wee hours of the night and rarely even close to being on time. Yes, I know it's all a matter of ridership demand, but is it more of a case of poor service due to lack of passenger demand, or lack of passenger demand due to poor service? I often think that as far as our area (Nebraska) is concerned, Amtrak might as well not even exist.