Rolling Along Through the Rolling Iowa Countryside...
After 10 years of living about 2 hours away, I finally crossed one off my "Railfan Bucket List" this last Friday and made a visit to the Iowa River Railroad.
Here the railroad's current workhorse for the "mainline" trains, IARR 3802, leads 5 loaded hopper and 16 empty tank cars over a one of a series of small wooden bridges on the line south of Ackley, Iowa near 130th Street.
This roughly 9 mile shortline exists to move traffic from the Pine Lake Corn Processors plant near Cleaves, Iowa to the interchange with the CN at Ackley, Iowa. The little railroad was started in 2006 to save a section of the former Minneapolis and St. Lous mainline via purchase from the UP, from Marshalltown up to Steamboat Rock and then further north to Ackley, Iowa, primarily to serve a new bioprocessing plant at Cleaves but with the hopes of other business. The portion between Marshalltown and the plant at Cleaves was later abandoned and parts of it turned into a rail trail. But this segment is still operated regularly on weekdays as the railroad shuttles traffic to and from the CN main over an undulating and interesting stretch of track. That's the Pine Lake Corn Processor's logo on the nose of the engine, showing the ownership of this railroad and why it exists...
This was a fun little chase of a handsome looking engine and was one of those days where everything seemed to go my way... What had started out as a cloudy morning (which was okay for the northbound run that would have been nose dark anyway) has rapidly turned into a partly cloudy and soon to be mostly sunny day for the southbound return trip. And my relatively new Air 3 drone (I'm loving the 3x telephoto lens on it...) gave the opportunity to shoot a number of cool angles and somewhat work work around the pesky pole line that follows the east side of the tracks. About the only thing that didn't go my way was that the railroad's other mainline unit, GP30 IARR 3004 which faces north, appeared to be out of service or at least out of use at the Pine Lake Processors plant. More to come from this series in future postings for sure!
Rolling Along Through the Rolling Iowa Countryside...
After 10 years of living about 2 hours away, I finally crossed one off my "Railfan Bucket List" this last Friday and made a visit to the Iowa River Railroad.
Here the railroad's current workhorse for the "mainline" trains, IARR 3802, leads 5 loaded hopper and 16 empty tank cars over a one of a series of small wooden bridges on the line south of Ackley, Iowa near 130th Street.
This roughly 9 mile shortline exists to move traffic from the Pine Lake Corn Processors plant near Cleaves, Iowa to the interchange with the CN at Ackley, Iowa. The little railroad was started in 2006 to save a section of the former Minneapolis and St. Lous mainline via purchase from the UP, from Marshalltown up to Steamboat Rock and then further north to Ackley, Iowa, primarily to serve a new bioprocessing plant at Cleaves but with the hopes of other business. The portion between Marshalltown and the plant at Cleaves was later abandoned and parts of it turned into a rail trail. But this segment is still operated regularly on weekdays as the railroad shuttles traffic to and from the CN main over an undulating and interesting stretch of track. That's the Pine Lake Corn Processor's logo on the nose of the engine, showing the ownership of this railroad and why it exists...
This was a fun little chase of a handsome looking engine and was one of those days where everything seemed to go my way... What had started out as a cloudy morning (which was okay for the northbound run that would have been nose dark anyway) has rapidly turned into a partly cloudy and soon to be mostly sunny day for the southbound return trip. And my relatively new Air 3 drone (I'm loving the 3x telephoto lens on it...) gave the opportunity to shoot a number of cool angles and somewhat work work around the pesky pole line that follows the east side of the tracks. About the only thing that didn't go my way was that the railroad's other mainline unit, GP30 IARR 3004 which faces north, appeared to be out of service or at least out of use at the Pine Lake Processors plant. More to come from this series in future postings for sure!