The Unofficial Iowa Northern Railway Site

Oelwein Turn

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Bryant Yard to Oelwein (ex-CGW Kansas City mainline)

Currently called for 1100 Monday through Saturday and at 0900 on Sundays. They are called for 1100 so that they don't get in the way of the UP switch job on the UP owned track between Linden Yard and Dewar, which is usually tied up by 1130. If there are cars that need to get out to the ethonal plant in Fairbank ASAP, then the job can be called for 0600 to get out ahead of the UP crew. 
 
This job makes up their train at Bryant and heads over to the UP's Linden Yard. If there are cars there for Oelwein then they will make a pick up, otherwise they continue on UP trackage rights through the yard, past the John Deere plant at Armour and out to Dewar. At Dewar UP ownership ends and Transco ownership begins.
 
After Dewar is Dunkerton, where there is an elevator that has started shipping by rail again now that IANR operates the line. The elevator has expanded across the highway and has three tracks: the original siding under the loading spout (here after refered to as "Track 1"), the longer new siding on the south side of the highway ("Track 2," closest to the mainline), and the second new siding south of the highway ("Track 3", located next to Track 2 on the opposite side from the main). Track 1 can hold 11 cars, Track 2 can hold 15, and Track 3 can hold 10 cars. They typically send loads to the ethonal plant in Fairbank, ADM in Cedar Rapids, or Bunge MS on the CN.
 
Next is Fairbank, site of the newly opened ethonal plant, Hawkeye Renewables. When they rebuilt this, they moved the end of the siding a few hundred feet east and removed the photogenic small switchstand infront of the Fairbank Aquatic Center. The ethonal plant itself is on the east side of town and has its own small storage yard and trackmobile to move cars. The storage yard is along the mainline on the east side of the plant and the farthest east switch for this is located just off of Unicorn Ave. There is also a siding that extends from the plant west into Fairbank that usually has some cars stored on it.
 
After that is Oelwein. Oelwein is home to the reason this part of the CGW is still in existance: TRANSCO. TRANSCO rebuilds, repaints, and stores railroad equipment in the former CGW roundhouse and diesel shops (the CGW's massive freight and passenger car backhouses still stand across from the Hub City Museum unused and I think still owned by UP). TRANSCO also takes part in transloading. On the east side of the Hub City Museum, the IANR serves the Oelwein Elevator, which is located on the old Oelwein-Dubuque mainline. Also served in Oelwein is Crystal Distribution (a plastics plant) and Hancor (a drain tile manufacturer).
 
Hancor is located on the old Oelwein-Twin Cities mainline right off of Highway 3. There has been talk in the past of industrial development north of Highway 3 on this trackage, but nothing has come if it yet.

Big thanks goes out to Ed Raye, not only for providing a lot of information on this line, but for also giving a heads up on the call times for this job over the years, making it able for me to become familiar with this line and its operations.

The views and opinions expressed in The Unofficial IANR Site are that of the webmaster and not the IANR.