Operations
Operations on the railroad are controlled by track warrants rather than signals. When the IAIS took control of the track, the signal system was already damaged beyond repair, so the trains were operated by warrant control. A centralized traffic control system has yet to be installed on the railroad's mainline.
Beginning in the mid 1990s, the IAIS mainline has been identified as a potential route for high speed passenger train service between Wyanet, Illinois (where the IAIS could be connected to the BNSF Railway), the Quad Cities and Iowa City, Iowa, as part of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative (MRRI). The ultimate goal of the MRRI is to establish passenger train routes in a hub-and-spoke formation with Chicago as the hub that allow for speeds up to and above 110 mph (177 km/h). Estimate of capital costs to upgrade the IAIS mainline to allow passenger train speeds of 79 mph (127 km/h) between Wyanet and Iowa City is $54.9 million, according to an April 2008 study by Amtrak.
The IAIS and the railroad infrastructure were purchased from Heartland by Railroad Development Corporation in 2003.
IAIS subsidiary Rail Traffic Control provides consulting services for dispatching and operating small- to medium-sized railroads worldwide.
In 2004, IAIS was awarded the E. H. Harriman Award for its safe operational record.
Read more about this topic: Iowa Interstate Railroad
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)