Eastern Iowa Train Watching

[Anonymous]

I am just back (in Minneapolis) from a Business Trip to Iowa City IA. Having never driven that route,and not having any time to really train watch, it seemed that there were a lot of tracks and no trains. Are there good places to watch trains around, say, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, or north of there? Or is it all (now) Union Pacific?

[Anonymous]

Cedar rapids is a great place to railfan. Plenty of public places to watch the UP mainlines. Plus the CRANDIC runs a few trains from the Iowa Interstate transfer at iowa city. Waterloo you can catch the UP switcher,the iowa northern? and the CN/IC line. I belive the CN runs about 2 trains a day thru waterloo. Northeast of waterloo is the town of Oelwein, back in the day it was a huge CGW center. Now all there is is a mueseum with a repainted CGW FP7 on display along with other loco's. Also UP has a fleet of ex CNW GP38-2's on the deadline waiting to be sold.

North of waterloo on hwy. 218at Charles City you run into the IMRL main. There should be at least a few freights each way every day on that line.

Sorry if i couldent be of much more help.
JC

[eolafan]

I took a trip to Cedar Rapids recently and checked into the Sheraton Four Points by the airport at about midnight...at about 1 a.m. I heard "that sound" and threw open the drapes to find that my room overlooked the UP mainline...LOTS AND LOTS OF TRAINS ALL NIGHT...the one way not sleeping was aok. Pretty much UP all the way in that neck of the woods.

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot for all the info. I am going to try to get back down into that area over the summer.