Iowa Traction Railway
geographical object
The Iowa Traction Railway Company (reporting mark IATR), formerly the Iowa Traction Railroad Company, is a class III shortline railroad operating in the United States as a common carrier. It was originally founded in 1896 as the Mason City and Clear Lake Traction Company, carrying both passenger and freight. Since 1937, Business has been exclusively freight. The company's main line connects Mason City and Clear Lake, Iowa. The IATR is notable for being one of two remaining non-passenger railroads in the United States to use electric locomotives, the other being the Deseret Power Railway in Utah and Colorado.
Route
The 10.4 miles (16.7 km) IATR extends east–west between the Mason City Transload Center, the railroad's headquarters in Emery (southwest of Mason City) and the city of Clear Lake, where the western section of its tracks terminate immediately east of Interstate 35 (I-35). At its eastern end, the railroad interchanges within the Mason City Transload Center with the almost parallel Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) to its north and with the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) at Clear Lake Junction. The railroad also interchanges with the CP within the Emery Transload Center. However, in 2020, most of the railroad's traffic traveled on only 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of track within Mason City.
History
Early history, 1896 to 1960
The IATR can trace its roots back to the Mason City and Clear Lake Traction Company, founded in 1896.
The public source identifies “Iowa Traction Railway” as geographical object. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Iowa, Traction and Railway.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q586941. Authority coordinates are 43.135, -93.280. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1937, 2020 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Iowa Traction Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.