Next on August 7, 1981, short line service between Cedar Rapids and Vinton and from Shell Rock to Nora Springs started.

[3] The railroad was originally owned by a group of grain elevators located along the line but was sold in 1994 to Iron Road Railways (IRR), a holding company based in Alexandria, Virginia, and Livonia, Michigan.

Traffic consists of grain, ethanol and other bio-fuels related commodities, chemicals, food products, and machinery.

After the short line was established in 1984, the railroad handled 12,000 revenue cars and the average track speed was less than 10 mph (16 km/h).

[citation needed] On May 23, 2011, the railroad announced that the North Central Iowa Rail Corridor LLC planned to purchase about 28 miles (45 km) of trackage from the Union Pacific Railroad between Forest City and Belmond, Iowa, that it would access via trackage rights on the Canadian Pacific Railway.

FD 35511 pp 31010][12] Pursuant to a prospective trackage rights agreement, Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Corporation d/b/a Canadian Pacific (CP) will agree to grant overhead trackage rights to Iowa Northern Railway Company (IANR) over approximately 78.2 miles of rail line between: (1) Milepost 137.50 near Garner, Iowa, and milepost 116.70 at the connection with CP's Mason City Subdivision, a distance of approximately 20.80 miles; (2) milepost 116.70 at the connection with CP's Mason City Subdivision and milepost 107.30 near Nora Jct., Iowa at the connection with IANR, a distance of approximately 30.2 miles between Garner and Nora Jct.

[13] IANR operates freight service over a 28-mile line of railroad now owned by North Central Iowa Rail Corridor LLC between Garner, Forest City and Belmond and includes incidental CP trackage rights between Garner, Mason City and Nora Jct or Plymouth Jct.