Amtrak has restored service to Wichita, although it will use buses rather than a train to connect with routes in Oklahoma City and Newton, officials announced Monday.

It will be the first Amtrak service in Wichita since a Houston-to-Chicago route was discontinued in 1979, The Wichita Eagle reported. The new service will be operated by a Wichita-based charter company and depart from a Greyhound bus station in downtown Wichita.

The idea for the bus route arose in discussions about closing a service gap between the routes serving Newton and Oklahoma City, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said.

“We’ve talked about doing it with a train, a lot goes into doing it with a train,” Magliari said. “That’s still a great idea, but why wait? Why not put a bus connection in and allow people from Wichita to connect to the rest of the world and the rest of the world to connect to Wichita?”

One route will connect in Newton to Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, which runs from Los Angeles to Chicago with stops including Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dodge City, Garden City, Topeka and Kansas City, Missouri. Another route connects to the Heartland Flyer at Oklahoma City, which provides access to the Texas Eagle, the southern Los Angeles-to-Chicago train, with stops in such places as the Texas cities of Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and El Paso; Tucson, Arizona; Little Rock, Arkansas; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Wichita is renovating its Downtown Transit Center, and the Amtrak buses will eventually be moved there, Mayor Jeff Longwell said.