48 Business View Magazine - May 2016
ous short line operations, including the former Ban-
gor and Aroostook System. He has also worked at CSX
Transportation and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Prior
to the purchase of the Iowa Northern, Sabin presided
over his own transportation consulting firm.
He tells the story of the last days of the Rock Island
Line’s “mighty good road”: “It was in a period before
deregulation and all of the railroads were really strug-
gling,” he begins. “The Rock Island and the Milwaukee
both went into bankruptcy in the Midwest about the
same time the Penn Central situation was going on out
east. If they could have lived until deregulation, they
probably would still be there, today. But, at that time
they just ran out of cash. The tracks had deteriorated
considerably. The line was in extremely bad shape
from a track standpoint and an equipment stand-
point. There was very little traffic left on the line; there
were trees growing between the rails; farmers had put
barbed wire fence across the track and turned it into
pasture land. In the early 1980s, the Rock Island went
through bankruptcy and the liquidation process. So
the grain elevators along the line, along with a few in-
vestors, bought the railroad from the trustee in 1984.”
Sabin says that the new owners were committed to get-
ting the railroad back on its feet, but “they didn’t have
any experience in the railroad industry. It took them a
couple of years to even get the line passable through
the whole route from Manley to Cedar Rapids.” Then,
a friend of his became President of the new line while
Sabin was doing consulting work in Michigan. “He
asked me to help him do a lot of contractual things
and work on a marketing plan. He subsequently be-
came disabled with a heart attack and so, in ’93, the
owners of the line asked me if I would help them find
a buyer. I told them I would as long as I could be con-
sidered as a potential candidate. And so, they agreed
to that. There were a number of offers made for the
company, but, fortunately, we had a relationship that
was pretty strong, and a lot of trust, so they allowed
me and a group of investors to buy the line from them.
