(The following story by Steve Gravelle appeared on the Cedar Rapids Gazette website on September 2.)
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — If Labor Day is a time to look back on the summer just past, for railroads serving Eastern Iowa it’s with relief.
“What a great year to be on the Cedar and Iowa rivers,” joked Jeff Woods, marketing manager for the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway (CRANDIC). “Everybody’s been hit really hard.”
With its operations concentrated along both rivers in the area hardest-hit by June’s floods, CRANDIC sustained about $9 million in damage.
Some railroads are still adding up their repair bills. But the Rebuild Iowa Office estimated last month the state’s two major trunk railroads, the Union Pacific and the BNSF Railway, sustained $45 million to $60 million in damage. Shortline and regional railroads sustained about $41 million in damages, a Rebuild Iowa task force estimated.
The CRANDIC ceased operations June 13 as the Cedar crested in Cedar Rapids.
“We had no outlets out of town,” Woods said. “Our Amana line was under three miles of water, the old line to Iowa City had about one mile under water at the Iowa River. We just had no place to go, and that’s before you even take into consideration we had our bridge go into the river.”
The collapse of CRANDIC’s 793-foot span over the Cedar River was the railroad’s most dramatic, and at $7 million. its most costly loss. Less spectacular were dozens of washouts on other rail lines that disrupted service across Eastern Iowa.
Three months later, service is restored across the region, with help from $3.9 million in low-interest loans from the Iowa Department of Transportation to the state’s shortlines and regional railroads.
CRANDIC called its workers back after three days, and operations were mostly back to normal by July, albeit minus some major customers.
Like the CRANDIC, Cedar Rapids-based Iowa Northern Railway continues to work around the loss of a key bridge, in its case a span over the Cedar River at Waterloo.
“That (bridge) connects the two segments of our railroad together,” said Iowa Northern President Daniel Sabin, whose executive offices were temporarily displaced from the Paramount Theatre building.
Much of Iowa Northern’s business is delivering corn and soybeans from elevators along its line northwest of Waterloo to processors in Cedar Rapids — seven trains a week in normal times. With the line severed at Cedar Falls, the railroad hauls the grain north to Manly where it meets the Union Pacific. The Union Pacific takes the Iowa Northern’s traffic south to Nevada, then east to Cedar Rapids. (See map.)
“The UP has just been incredibly cooperative and helpful,” Sabin said.
With Quaker and Penford Products still repairing their riverside plants, the Iowa Northern sends only two trains a week to Cedar Rapids — corn for the ADM plant off 66th Street SW.
“We’re running larger trains but less frequently,” Sabin said. “It kind of puts a ceiling on the level of business we can handle,” but transit times haven’t suffered much.
Sabin hopes the Waterloo bridge, itself owned by the UP, will be replaced by next summer. Iowa Northern will pay half the cost, estimated at $5 million to $6 million.
“If everything works out well, we’ll be a stronger system than before the flood,” Sabin said. “But we think it’s going to be a nine-months-to-a-year process.”
The CRANDIC Bridge across the Cedar River near the Penford Products plant handled more than 20,000 cars a year. A preliminary design for a replacement was approved last week, and Woods said the new bridge should be in place by next summer.
Elsewhere in the region
Canadian National — “Everything was rolling by the end of June” on CN’s Iowa lines, railroad spokesman Patrick Waldron said. The CN reaches Cedar Rapids via a branch from Manchester on its east-west line. The Cedar Rapids freight yard along the southeast shore of Cedar Lake flooded, and it had washouts near Waterloo and in Mitchell County. Bridges were damaged at Sioux City and Waterloo.
Iowa Chicago & Eastern — Operations were interrupted up to 10 days at various places on IC&E’s system, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation. The most notable occurred nearly a month after the flood’s crest, as a rock slide caused by continued rains sent a boulder onto the track near Guttenberg early July 9. Two railroad employees suffered minor injuries when their train struck the rock, sending four locomotives into the Mississippi River.
Iowa Interstate — The railroad sustained about $1 million damage to its line between Chicago and Council Bluffs via Iowa City, Grinnell, Newton and Des Moines, said President and CEO Dennis Miller. The Iowa Interstate is based in Cedar Rapids. About a mile of track washed out near Atalissa in Muscatine County, and track was damaged outside the Des Moines flood gates, Miller said. “We were down about 10 days, mainly due to the Atalissa segment,” Miller said.
Union Pacific — The transcontinental company’s main line through Clinton, Cedar Rapids, Boone and Omaha, Neb., was shut down nine days because of washouts at several locations, spokesman Mark Davis said.
BNSF Railway — The main line from Ottumwa to Burlington was shut down June 14 to July 3. Spokesman Steve Forsberg said trains were detoured on other routes. The most serious damage was at Gulfport, Ill., across the Mississippi River from Burlington, when a levee gave way. Repairs there took two weeks, Forsberg said.