The Illini and Saluki are a pair of passenger trains operated by Amtrak along a 310-mile (500 km) route between Chicago and Carbondale, Illinois.

[5] Amtrak retained two trains on this route: the City of New Orleans (which it named the Panama Limited) and the Shawnee.

Amtrak brought back the Illini name on November 14, 1971, as a Chicago-Champaign train, operating in conjunction with the Campus.

The state desired to extend the Illini to Decatur, but doing so involved a switch from the Illinois Central to the Norfolk & Western at Tolono, south of Champaign.

Poor ridership prompted Illinois to withdraw its support for the Decatur stop, and Amtrak cut the Illini back to Champaign on July 10, 1983.

[10][11] On January 12, 1986, Amtrak extended the Illini to Carbondale to replace the Shawnee, which had been canceled because of budget cuts.

In 2020, CN began requiring Amtrak to use trains with seven bilevel Superliner cars, rather than less-heavy single-level equipment.

[18] In October 2024, Amtrak was awarded a $59 million federal grant to install shunt enhancer devices on its locomotives and cab cars to remove this requirement.

[20] The Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE) is in the preliminary design phase for the Grand Crossing Project.