Northern Lights Express

Northern Lights Express
Overview
Status	Planning (pending preliminary engineering phase)
Owner	BNSF
Locale	Minnesota and Wisconsin, United States
Termini	Minneapolis, Minnesota Duluth, Minnesota
Stations	6 (proposed)
Service
Type	Inter-city/commuter rail, higher-speed rail
Services	4
Operator(s)	Amtrak (?)
Ridership	700,000 annually (projected)
History
Opened	TBA
Technical
Line length	155 miles (249 km)
Character	Surface
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Operating speed	Maximum: 90 mph (145 km/h) Average: 60 mph (97 km/h)
Route map Legend North Shore Scenic Railroad Duluth Depot I-35 I-535 Grassy Point Bridge over the Saint Louis Bay MN WI Superior WI MN Kettle River High Bridge over the Kettle River I-35 Hinckley Cambridge Empire Builder and Northstar Line Coon Rapids–Foley Boulevard I-694 Empire Builder Minneapolis BNSF Rail Bridge over the Mississippi River Minneapolis Target Field Metro Blue & Green lines all stations accessible This diagram: view talk edit

The Northern Lights Express (NLX) is a planned higher-speed rail service that would run 155 miles (249 km) between Minneapolis and Duluth primarily in the U.S. state of Minnesota. A portion of the proposed line would run through neighboring Wisconsin to serve Duluth's "Twin Port" of Superior. Plans are to upgrade an existing BNSF Railway freight line to allow trains to travel at up to 90 miles per hour (145 km/h).^[1][2] The train service is said to provide an alternative to traveling Interstate 35 between Duluth and the Twin Cities or to other destinations along the line such as the casino in Hinckley.

The proposed service's trains would mostly follow the same route as Amtrak's former North Star, except that it would originate in Minneapolis rather than neighboring Saint Paul, and it is planned to stop at a suburban Twin Cities station (probably constructed at Metro Transit's Foley Boulevard bus station). The proposed route follows part of the Northstar commuter rail route which opened in 2009, and would contain the entirety of the proposed Bethel Corridor commuter route, although that service is not expected to be operational by the time recent estimates of when NLX might open.