Trolley Tuesday 9/01/2020 - Iowa Traction Railway

 We live in a time, right now, where anachronisms are not only appreciated but celebrated. Bars and restaurants will brag about how their food has given them almost or over one hundred years of service, old folks will roll around in their mid-century land yachts from an age where chrome was considered a safety feature, and of course there come the old railroads that still operate in somewhat original form like the South Shore Line or the Chicago Loop. Among the Midwestern railroads, there is one tiny little freight operation in the Hawkeye State of Iowa that has continued to tootle along, as if nothing's happened to it in the 100+ years its been in operation. Today, we know this little line as the Iowa Traction Railway (IATR), but its history goes back farther, all the way to 1897, and it is a line that deserves to be remembered and celebrated.