By Justin Franz

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — The Iowa Interstate Railroad has asked the Federal Railroad Administration for a waiver of compliance to push back a required 15-year overhaul of its Chinese-built 2-10-2 locomotive so it can run this fall. 

According to a filing with the Federal Register on April 14, Iowa Interstate 6988 is due for a 1,472-day inspection this September, but the railroad would like to push that back to Dec. 20, 2021. However, if local COVID restrictions are not lifted and the railroad can’t run excursions this year, they would like to have it pushed all the way to Dec. 20, 2022. The railroad notes that the locomotive was only fired up once in 2020. 

Iowa Interstate officials wrote in the filing that they anticipated “about 40 service days in 2021,” if they get approval. The locomotive was last in excursion service in 2019. 

Locomotive 6988 is one of two QJs that Iowa Interstate purchased from China in 2006. Over the years both locomotives have been used for community events. Locomotive 6988 has been altered to look more like an American locomotive but the second one — QJ 7081, which is presently out of service — looks as it did when it was running on Jitong Railway in China in the 1990s and early 2000s.