Cedar Rapids & Iowa City

Company History: This line is popularly known as the Crandic. That’s “CR-and-IC”. This line was originally an electric interurban line between its namesake cities in Iowa. Like many interurban lines especially in Iowa, the Crandic did have significant freight traffic.

In 1953 passenger service was discontinued and the trolley wire de-energized. Diesels took over the freight service. In 1980, Crandic snapped up a connecting 6 mile branch from the bankrupt Rock Island. The following year, they bought a connecting 21 mile branch from the Milwaukee Road. This brought the Crandic up to its current size, 60 miles of mainline and 40 track miles of yards, spurs and sidings.

Until 2004, Crandic ran a through freight daily in addition to the many local freights. However they decided to concentrate on the locals and arranged with Iowa Interstate to handle the through freight. In June of 2008, a severe flood caused the collapse of Crandic’s bridge over the Cedar River. That bridge has been rebuilt. Alliant Energy owns the railroad today.

Successor/Parent History: Alliant Energy Corporation is a public utility holding company headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. Alliant Energy's two regulated utilities include Interstate Power and Light Company (IPL) and Wisconsin Power and Light Company (WPL). IPL started in 1925 as the Interstate Power Company (IPC) and which was a consolidation of several small utility companies scattered across northern Iowa and southern Minnesota. IPC merged or consolidated with several other Iowa-based utilities before forming IPL, which was later merged with WPL.

IPC expanded greatly in the late 1920s to include operations in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Manitoba (Canada). One of the largest purchases in the late 1920s was the purchase of what became its northern Minnesota territory from the Wilbur Foshay interests. Also was widely carried along CSX Rail lines.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the effects of the Depression and passage of laws to regulate utility operations at the state and federal level had an effect on IPC as well as its neighbors. In Iowa, the legislature passed laws making it easier for cities to establish municipal utilities (and indeed, there are over 100 municipal utilities in Iowa today). By 1940, the state of Nebraska had passed laws that forced all investor-owned utilities in that state to sell their operations to one of several "public power districts" operating in that state.

From Wikipedia

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.