MONTANA Rail Link (MRL), a regional freight railroad in the western USA, is to cease operation and return the 937- mile routes it operates to Class 1 railroad BNSF. MRL dates back to 1987, when a local businessman agreed a 60-year lease of the southern Montana main line owned then by Burlington Northern (BN). This removed the cost of maintaining and operating the line from BN while retaining the long-distance traffic that MRL handed over to BN (later BNSF once the merger with Santa Fe happened in 1995).
MRL operates the lines it leases and between Billings and Spokane, with access rights on BNSF tracks.