Has IP gone "Belly up"?

An excellent opinion piece, Mr. Safetee, which appears on the preceding page. Sorry it took me nine months to review it.

I wish it possible for your thoughts to have wider circulation within the passenger train community than this site can afford; for Mr. Sextant's immediate report appears to be the case.

I really had to "dig" to find a report that the main company, Iowa Pacific Holdings, had filed. I highly doubt if there was much left for the creditors and of course nothing for any equity holders.

when folks initially saw the ip colors and the pullman porters and the prospect for a really spic and span money is no object operation it was hard to believe that ip was anything but the most exciting thing to happen in us passenger rail for years. for the cynics, looking at their proposals if you knew anything at all about rail operations and related costs you'd have to conclude that it was way too good to be financially true.

IP did not start off as a scam. It was a genuine rail religion based strictly on the value of providing first class passenger rail services.. Mister Ellis convinced his cohorts and investors that everything that IP did from pullmans to salted nuts would and had to be first class at all times. If they hadn't forgotten the little dangling participle of the FRA loan payback requirements they might have been able to keep it all going.

Sooner or later they probably would have needed more freight to pay for the varnish catechism. Virtually none of the passenger operations fully covered their costs. When the FRA lenders came a calling, the only things that they could easily sell were the money making freight operations. Like the Titanic once the freight lines were gone, IP circus world and company was soon to follow.