Business View Magazine - May 2016 47
The real Rock Island Line was actually incorporated in
Illinois back in 1847 as the Rock Island and La Salle
Railroad Company. Over the next hundred years, the
ever expanding rail network carried an untold number
of goods and passengers across the American Mid-
west - Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and
Texas. The easternmost reach of the system was Chi-
cago; it also reached southeast to Memphis, Tennes-
see. To the west, the Rock Island reached Denver, Col-
orado, and Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Southernmost
tracks led to Galveston, Texas, and Eunice, Louisiana,
while in a northerly direction, the Rock Island got as
far as Minneapolis, Minnesota. The first train to oper-
ate in the state of Iowa steamed from Davenport to
Muscatine in 1855.
But by the mid-twentieth century, parts of the original
Rock Island Line were anything but “the road to ride.”
In addition to growing competition from the trucking in-
dustry, onerous regulations made it “impossible to be
profitable” in the railroad sector, according to Daniel R.
Sabin, Owner and President of the Iowa Northern Rail-
way Company (IANR), the corporate inheritor of what
was once part of the Rock Island Railroad’s mainline
from Minneapolis to Chicago. “Under the regulated cli-
mate, we couldn’t even reduce our rates,” he explains.
“We had to go to the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion and get permission to make any changes. And it
did not allow the railroads to go out and be aggressive
in capturing more truck business.”
Sabin has been a railroad man his whole adult life.
He grew up in Manly, Iowa, a town at the northern end
of the line that runs diagonally through the northeast
quadrant of the state, northwest to southeast, from
Manly to Cedar Rapids. He started his career as a stu-
dent telegrapher on the Rock Island in 1968 and was
the youngest train dispatcher in the United States at
age 18. In addition to his stint with the Rock Island
Line, Sabin also ran the Iron Road Railways, based in
Alexandria, Virginia, which owned and operated vari-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
The Iowa and Northern Railway Company
WHAT:
A short line railroad in eastern Iowa
WHERE:
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
WEBSITE
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