Chicago–Boston: 21+1⁄2–22 hours[2] The Lake Shore Limited is an overnight passenger train operated by Amtrak between Chicago and the Northeastern United States, with sections to New York City and Boston.

[3] The Lake Shore Limited is named after one of its predecessors that ran on the famed Water Level Route of the New York Central Railroad (NYC).

Instead, Chicago–New York traffic was handled by the Broadway Limited using the Pennsylvania Railroad's main line via Pittsburgh, while Albany–Boston did not have any train service.

[5] The Lake Shore was the only train to serve Cleveland, Ohio, which had been the largest city left out of the initial system.

[10] The initial timetable served Cleveland during daytime hours, westbound travelers arrived at 7:30 AM and departed for New York City at 11:20 pm.

[12] On October 15, 1979, the Lake Shore Limited became the first Amtrak service to use rebuilt Heritage Fleet equipment with head end power.

[14] On the night of August 3, 1994, around 3:45 am, the westbound Lake Shore Limited, with two locomotives and fifteen cars, and carrying roughly 320 passengers, and nineteen crew members, derailed on Conrail-owned tracks (now owned by CSX) near Batavia, New York.

[16] Low demand and cost-cutting led Amtrak to drop through service to Boston between 2003 and 2008; passengers made a cross-platform transfer to a shuttle train.

Passengers traveling to New York City could transfer at Albany–Rensselaer to Empire Service trains, which operated into Grand Central Terminal during the outage.

[24][25] In July 2016, Amtrak once again replaced the Lake Shore's full-service dining car with an Amfleet II diner-lite.

This was due to Heritage shortages, as well as a multi-year delay in delivery of the new CAF Viewliner II cars, including 25 diners.

[27][28] In January 2019, Amtrak significantly updated the boxed meal service to offer a full continental buffet at breakfast, and multiple hot entrées for lunch and dinner.

Amtrak considered more radical changes to the operations of the Lake Shore Limited, including a re-route over the Chicago–Detroit Line to Dearborn, but rejected them.

The train travels on Amtrak's Post Road Branch from Rensselaer to nearby Schodack, from Schodack to Worcester on CSX's Berkshire and Boston subdivisions, and from Worcester to South Station on the Framingham/Worcester Line track owned and operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

[citation needed] The Boston section is frequently delayed to the high amount of freight traffic on the single-track railroad between Albany and Worcester.

[citation needed] As of August 2021[update], Viewliner II sleepers were expected to be added to the Lake Shore Limited that September.

According to Amtrak, passengers making connections in Chicago accounted for "a significant portion" of the Lake Shore Limited's ridership and revenues.