Sunset Limited

The Sunset Limited is a passenger train that for most of its history has run between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Los Angeles, California, over the nation's second transcontinental route.

Both passenger totals and revenues have shown a steady improvement in recent years. During fiscal year 2014, the Sunset Limited carried 105,000 passengers, an increase of 2.1% over FY2013, even as the total for all long distance service declined that year. But held back by running only three days a week (one of the two out of 15 long-distance trains that are not daily) the Sunset Ltd. carried the fewest passengers of any in the Amtrak system. For FY2014, it had a total revenue of $12,598,000, giving it a 2.6% increase over FY2013.

Route

West of New Orleans, the route was owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad and is now owned by the BNSF Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad. The name Sunset Limited traces its origins to the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway, which was known as the Sunset Route as early as 1874. On the portion of the route east of New Orleans, service was suspended after Hurricane Katrina. Those tracks, between New Orleans and Florida, include parts of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad—all now owned by CSX Transportation. Currently, the segment of the former Atlantic Coast Line Railroad between DeLand and Orlando is owned by Central Florida Rail Corridor (CFRC) as of 2014.

The Sunset Limited

The Sunset Limited is a play by American writer Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy's second published play, it was first produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on May 18, 2006, and it traveled to New York City later that same year. The play was published in a paperback edition about the same time that it opened in New York. Some consider it to be more a novel than a true play, partly because of its subtitle, "A Novel in Dramatic Form".

Plot

The play involves only two nameless characters, designated "White" (originally played by Austin Pendleton) and "Black" (originally played by Freeman Coffey), their respective skin colors. Offstage, just before the play begins, Black saves White from throwing himself in front of a train. The title, The Sunset Limited, is derived from the name of a passenger train that travels from New Orleans to Los Angeles. All of the action takes place in Black's sparse apartment, where the characters go (at the behest of Black) after their encounter on the platform. Black is an ex-convict and an evangelical Christian. White is an atheist and a professor. They debate the meaning of human suffering, the existence of God, and the propriety of White's attempted suicide.