The Iowa Interstate Railroad is a Class II

regional railroad In the United States, a regional railroad is a railroad company that is not Class I, but still has a substantial amount of traffic or trackage (and is thus not a short line). The Association of American Railroads (AAR) has defined the lower boun ...

operating in the central

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. The railroad is owned by

Railroad Development Corporation The Railroad Development Corporation is an American railroad holding company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It operates several short line railroads outside the United States and acts as an investor, with management and institutional inves ...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

History

The railroad was formed on November 2, 1984, using former

Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (CRI&P RW, sometimes called ''Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway'') was an American Class I railroad. It was also known as the Rock Island Line, or, in its final years, The Rock. At the end ...

tracks between

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...

and

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest c ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...

, four years after the Rock Island folded. It was in partnership with

real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more genera ...

firm Heartland Rail Corporation that the IAIS was able to operate. Heartland purchased the

right-of-way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

and infrastructure for $31 million (of which, $15 million was a loan from the Iowa Railway Finance Authority), and then leased it to IAIS for operations. The IAIS and the railroad infrastructure were purchased from Heartland by Railroad Development Company of Pittsburgh, PA in 2003. In recognition of the railroad's Rock Island Railroad heritage, the IAIS logo uses a shape similar to the original railroad's logo and has also painted two of its General Electric ES44AC locomotives (513 and 516) in Rock Island inspired paint schemes.

Operations

When the IAIS took control of the track, the former Rock Island signal system was already damaged beyond repair due to sitting dormant for several years. Operations on the railroad are primarily controlled by

track warrant A track warrant is a set of instructions issued to a train crew authorizing specific train movements. The system is widely used in North America. The warrant is issued by the train dispatcher and delivered to the train crew via radio. The train cr ...

s rather than signals as a result. Trains are dispatched from the company's HQ in

Cedar Rapids Cedar Rapids () is the second-largest city in Iowa, United States and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and northeast of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city. I ...

, Iowa, where a new dispatching office was completed in 2016. IAIS uses

Wabtec Wabtec Corporation (derived from Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation) is an American company formed by the merger of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) and MotivePower Industries Corporation in 1999. It is headquartered ...

's Train Management and Dispatching System (TMDS), the same dispatching software used by several Class I railroads, including the BNSF and KCS. The railroad's mainline is roughly a straight line between

Council Bluffs, Iowa Council Bluffs is a city in and the county seat of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, United States. The city is the most populous in Southwest Iowa, and is the third largest and a primary city of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Metropolitan Area. It is loc ...

, and

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, with a

branch line A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industr ...

connecting Bureau to

Peoria, Illinois Peoria ( ) is the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, United States, and the largest city on the Illinois River. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 113,150. It is the principal city of the Peoria Metropolitan Area in Ce ...

. The mainline is separated into 4 Subdivisions: *Council Bluffs Subdivision (Council Bluffs to Des Moines, Iowa) *Newton Subdivision (East Des Moines to South Amana, Iowa) *Iowa City Subdivision (South Amana to Silvis, Illinois) *Blue Island Subdivision (Silvis to Bureau Junction, Illinois) The railroad also includes the: *Peoria Subdivision (Bureau Junction to Peoria, Illinois) *Cedar Rapids Subdivision (South Amana to Cedar Rapids, Iowa). This line is owned by the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railroad, but dispatched and operated by the Iowa Interstate. The Iowa Interstate operates from Bureau to Chicago over the former Rock Island tracks controlled by

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of trac ...

and

Metra Metra is the commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area serving the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs via the Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, and other railroads. The system operates 242 stations on 11 rail lines ...

. In Chicago the IAIS owns two yard facilities, Burr Oak Yard and Evans Yard (the site of former rail car builder Evans), both in

Blue Island, Illinois Blue Island is a city in Cook County, Illinois, located approximately south of Chicago's Loop. Blue Island is adjacent to the city of Chicago and shares its northern boundary with that city's Morgan Park neighborhood. The population was 22,55 ...

. The Iowa Interstate is unique in that it is the only Class II railroad in the US that has connections to every Class I railroad, affording its customers a reach not offered by other regional railroads. The railroad also maintains two intermodal operations at either end of its line in Chicago and Council Bluffs. The operation in Council Bluffs is also used by the Union Pacific, with IAIS crews interchanging with UP several times a day. IAIS subsidiary Rail Traffic Control formerly provided consulting services for dispatching and operating small- to medium-sized railroads worldwide. In 2004, IAIS was awarded the

E. H. Harriman Award The E.H. Harriman Award was an annual award presented to American railroad companies in recognition for outstanding safety achievements. History The award was founded in 1913 by Mary Averell Harriman, wife of the late Edward H. Harriman. Afte ...

for its safe operational record.

Amtrak

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the IAIS mainline has been identified as a potential route for high speed passenger train service between Wyanet, Illinois (where the IAIS could be connected to the BNSF Railway), the

Quad Cities The Quad Cities is a region of cities (originally four, see History) in the U.S. states of Iowa and Illinois: Davenport and Bettendorf in southeastern Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline and East Moline in northwestern Illinois. These cities are t ...

and Iowa City, as part of the

Midwest Regional Rail Initiative The Chicago Hub Network is a collection of proposed fast conventional and high-speed rail lines in the Midwestern United States including of track. Since the 1990s, there have been multiple proposals to build a network from Chicago to destin ...

(MRRI). The ultimate goal of the MRRI is to establish passenger train routes in a hub-and-spoke formation with Chicago as the hub that allow for speeds up to and above 110 mph (177 km/h). In July 2019, a new transportation bill was passed by the Illinois state legislature, supported by Governor J.B. Pritzker, $225M was appropriated to begin

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

service from Chicago to Moline, IL. A rail connector (junction) will be built between BNSF and IAIS to permit the Quad Cities service to use BNSF mainline from Wyanet to

Chicago Union Station Chicago Union Station is an intercity and commuter rail terminal located in the Near West Side neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The station is Amtrak's flagship station in the Midwest. While serving long-distance passenger trains, it is also ...

. This Amtrak route will use the IAIS main line between Wyanet and Moline, IL. Upgrades to IAIS rail crossings, track, and signaling for Amtrak's 79-mph requirements will be performed.

Motive power

Slug-rebuilt-from-emd-gp8--iowa-interstate-railroad-651--2019-11-09-in-rock-island-illinois

IAIS uses 42 locomotives and two slugs to power its trains: * 4 EMD SD38-2 (Numbered 150-153) * 20 GE ES44AC (Numbered 500-519); unit 513 is painted in a Rock Island commemorative scheme; unit 516 is painted in a Rock Island inspired 30th anniversary paint scheme. * 1

EMD GP38 The EMD GP38 is a four-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between January 1966 and December 1971. The locomotive's prime mover was an EMD 645 16-cylinder engine that generated . The company built 70 ...

(Numbered 601) * 17

EMD GP38-2 The EMD GP38-2 is an American four-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors, Electro-Motive Division. Part of the EMD Dash 2 line, the GP38-2 was an upgraded version of the earlier GP38. Power is provided by an EMD 645E 16-cyl ...

(Numbered 700-703; 705; 707-708; 710-716; 718-719; 721) 720 was sold/leased to ADM in

Des Moines, Iowa Des Moines () is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, ...

in 2017. * 2

Slugs Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word ''slug'' is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced shell, or only a sma ...

(Numbered 650 and 651) 601 and 650 are semi-permanently mated, as are 721 and 651 In 2006, IAIS also purchased two ex- China Railways QJ 2-10-2 steam locomotives, numbered 6988 and 7081 for special

excursion trains An excursion train is a chartered train run for a special event or purpose. Examples are trains to major sporting event, trains run for railfans or tourists, and special trains operated by the railway company for employees and prominent customer ...

and fundraising events. 6988 has been "Americanized", with a paint scheme inspired by Iowa Interstate's ES44AC locomotives. 7081 retains its original China Railways paint with Iowa Interstate badges. Both were later donated to Central States Steam Preservation Association. Since 2018 the 6988 has made several excursion trips to raise money for local volunteer fire departments and promote awareness of

Operation Lifesaver Operation Lifesaver is the largest rail safety organization in the United States. It was founded by the Union Pacific Railroad in the early 1970s. History In 1972, the Idaho State Highway Patrol, then-Governor Cecil Andrus and the Union Pacifi ...

. As of 2022, both 6988 and 7081 are out of service pending overhaul.

Pop-up Metro

The

has ordered at least one 2-car -variant of the

Vivarail D-Train The Vivarail D-Train is a family of multiple units Remanufacturing, remanufactured by Vivarail for the British rail network. They are converted from London Underground D78 Stock, originally manufactured between 1978 and 1981 by Metro-Cammell. Two ...

to operate on the Iowa Interstate Railroad in 2021 as a "pop-up" metro service.

Company officers

Officers : * Joe Parsons, President and CEO * Carrie Evans, Vice President Sales & Marketing * Allen Polfer, CFO * Al Satunas, COO * Greg Wilson, Director- Operating Systems * Bryan Pierce, Director of Information Technology * Tom Meierhoff, Director of Compliance and Dispatch * Adam Sutherland, Director of Safety and Security * Mike Stuver- Chief Transportation Officer * Chad Lambi, Chief Engineer * Andrew Reid, Chief Mechanical Officer * Bobbi Allen, Director of Human Resources Former Presidents of the Iowa Interstate Railroad: * Frederic W. Yocum Jr. * Doug Christy * Jon R. Roy * Dennis H. Miller * Jerome Lipka

References

* Association of American Railroads (February 2005),
Iowa Interstate Railroad is the February Featured Railroad
'. Retrieved May 23, 2005. General overview. * Bi-State Regional Rail Commission (2003),
Midwest Rail Initiative
'. Retrieved May 23, 2005. Details of the passenger rail studies. * Iowa Department of Transportation,

'. Retrieved May 4, 2009. Estimate of capital costs to improve line for passenger rail service. * Botting, Laura, Moline Dispatch Publishing Co. (1999),
Iowa Interstate picks up pieces
'. Retrieved May 23, 2005. Details of the purchase from Rock Island and Miller's predecessor as president. * Iowa Department of Rail,
Railroad Profiles - Iowa Interstate Railroad Ltd. (IAIS)
'. Retrieved May 23, 2005. Overview of the railroad, mention of RDC purchase year. * Iowa Interstate Railroad,

'. Retrieved May 23, 2005. General overview. * Iowa Interstate Railroad (July 15, 2004),
Iowa Interstate Announces Executive Appointment
' ( PDF). Retrieved May 23, 2005. Announced Miller's presidency. * Iowa Interstate Railroad (June 20, 2002),
Iowa Interstate Announces Senior Management Changes
' ( PDF). Retrieved May 23, 2005. Announced Roy's retirement from the presidency. *
IAIS Railfan's Guide
'. Retrieved May 23, 2005. Details the current operations of the railroad.

External links

*
Unofficial Iowa Interstate Photo Archive and Railfan Guide
{{authority control Companies operating former Chicago and North Western Transportation Company lines Companies operating former Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad lines Companies operating former Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad lines Illinois railroads Iowa railroads Nebraska railroads Railway companies established in 1984 Regional railroads in the United States