It runs approximately 150 miles (240 km) from La Crosse, Wisconsin to Saint Paul, Minnesota, following the Mississippi River.
The BNSF vertical lift bridge (adjacent to the Prescott Drawbridge) over the mouth of the St. Croix river is single-tracked.
Two of the Burlington Route's merger partners had used this stretch of track to run their passenger trains between Chicago, Illinois and Minneapolis–Saint Paul for many years beforehand: The Northern Pacific Railway's North Coast Limited went on the CB&Q, as did the Great Northern Railway's Empire Builder.
In the late 1970s, these trains were typically running combined between Chicago and the Twin Cities.
The Empire Builder was the only one of these trains to survive, and it was shifted to run on the former route of the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha.