This abandoned railway line was built by the Chicago Great Western railroad. It was abandoned in the 1980s.
At the southwest end of the line, Marshalltown, IA, first saw rail service when the Eldora Railroad and Coal Company came through town on its way to a connection with the Chicago and North Western at Omaha. However, by its completion in 1870, the railroad had been renamed to the Central Railroad Company of Iowa, which eventually became the Iowa Central. Though operated as a single company by the 1900s, both the Iowa Central and the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad merged in 1912; it is the marks of the M&StL that remain in town.