Previous services Prior to
Amtrak, private railroads ran passenger service between the Twin Cities and Chicago on several corridors. The
Chicago and North Western Railway (C&NW) operated Twin Cities–Chicago trains via Madison until the late 1950s, and via Milwaukee until the
Twin Cities 400 was discontinued on July 23, 1963. The
Milwaukee Road ran all its Twin Cities–Chicago trains via Milwaukee; by 1971, all that remained of the railroad's Twin Cities service was the daily
Morning Hiawatha plus the eastbound
Fast Mail. The
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) operated a more westerly Twin Cities–Chicago route via
Savanna, Illinois. It merged into the
Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) in 1970; by 1971, the BN offered three daily Twin Cities–Chicago round trips on the
Morning Zephyr,
Afternoon Zephyr,
Empire Builder, and
North Coast Limited. in St. Paul in 1978 Amtrak took over most intercity passenger rail service in the United States on May 1, 1971, keeping only half of existing service. The only Twin Cities–Chicago service that remained was the
Empire Builder, which was rerouted over the Milwaukee Road between the Twin Cities and Chicago in order to serve Milwaukee. The Minneapolis–Chicago train was renamed
Twin Cities Hiawatha on January 16, 1972, but returned to
Hiawatha on October 29, 1972. The
North Coast Hiawatha ran daily during the summers of 1974 to 1977, and the separate
Hiawatha did not operate. Based on the favorable ridership and revenue projections
MnDOT led a Phase 1 study in cooperation with
WisDOT,
IDOT, the Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority and the
FRA to analyze service alternatives, infrastructure upgrades and anticipated costs. The Phase 2 study was led by WisDOT to complete the environmental review and prepare a Service Development Plan. Schedule delays from Seattle to St. Paul were cited as part of the interest in having a reliable departure time from St. Paul. Infrastructure upgrades for the project were required in La Crosse, La Crescent, Winona and St. Paul. The total capital cost was $53.3 million, which was fully funded by federal grants, WisDOT and MnDOT. The project was scheduled to begin construction in 2023 and begin operations with one train in 2023. The TCMC service was anticipated to be the first phase of additional Amtrak service across Wisconsin with eventual extensions to
Madison and
Eau Claire. In a public meeting on December 1, 2022, an Amtrak representative stated that the service was expected to start by summer 2023 with the name
Great River, after the
Mississippi River ( means "Great River" in
Ojibwe). A paper by the
Wisconsin Legislature's Legislative Fiscal Bureau, published on June 6, 2023, for the legislature's Joint Committee on Finance, estimated that service would start in September 2023, with related construction to improve service beginning in early 2024 and ending in mid-to-late 2025. However, in fall 2023 the estimated start date of the train slipped to 2024. In December 2023, the FRA accepted the Chicago–La Crosse–St. Paul route into its
Corridor Identification and Development Program. The move granted $500,000 toward studying additional frequency on the route, and prioritized the corridor for future federal funding. , May 2024 In a February 2024 update, WisDOT announced that the service would be named the
Borealis instead of the
Great River, and that the train would use refurbished
Horizon railcars. However, the new name for the service was retracted within 24-hours of its announcement. Amtrak officially announced the train as the
Borealis in its press release introducing the train and announcing ticket sales on April 30, 2024. Service began on May 21, 2024. During its first 11 days of operation, the
Borealis averaged 604 daily passengers (329 westbound and 275 eastbound). Early demand for the
Borealis prompted Amtrak to consider adding a third daily round trip on the corridor. Ridership was projected to be 124,000 passengers per year. Total ridership in the first year of service was 205,800 passengers, contributing to overall ridership in the Chicago-
Twin Cities corridor more than tripling. In January 2025, Amtrak was awarded a $38.6 million federal grant to fund operation of the
Borealis through 2030.
Corridor timeline == Operation ==