Norfolk Southern Railway Co.’s plans to abandon its rail line between Grimes and Des Moines has forced one business to look outside the metro area for a new location with rail access.

Frontier Forest Products, headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., has operated a rail-served warehouse at 1100 Hoak Drive in West Des Moines for more than a decade. For the past couple of years, Rusty Arnold, the company’s CEO, has been looking for a site in the Des Moines area to relocate the business but so far, his search has been unsuccessful.

If Arnold can’t find a site with rail access for the company, “I may have to make the unfortunate decision to pull out [of the Des Moines area], which is the last thing I want to do,” he said. “We’ve been looking all over now for almost two years. Land is expensive. … Ours may not be a billion-dollar company like Amazon, but we’re a necessary business. We supply lumber to all the retail lumber yards and pro sales lumber yards [which serve professional contractors] across Iowa.

“From a distribution standpoint and supply chain standpoint, Norfolk’s decision to abandon the rail line is definitely impacting us.”

In mid-April, Norfolk Southern Railway filed a petition with the federal Surface Transportation Board indicating it planned to abandon the 12.2-mile rail line between Grimes and Des Moines that runs through West Des Moines, Windsor Heights, Clive and Urbandale. In the same petition, Iowa Interstate Railroad LLC said it would discontinue the lease and operation authority of the rail line when Norfolk stops using it.

The line was originally part of the St. Louis, Des Moines and Northern Railway that began operations in Iowa in 1881, according to the petition. Over the years, numerous rail acquisitions, mergers and foreclosures have occurred, resulting in Norfolk Southern’s ownership of the line and Iowa Interstate’s operation of it.

The federal board, which primarily regulates freight railroads, is expected to make a decision by July on Norfolk Southern’s request to abandon the line.

Line too costly to operate

In the petition, the rail companies said the expense of operating the line is more than the revenue it generates. Between 2021 and 2025, the line’s average annual revenue was $541,145, according to the petition. It costs over $1.2 million to operate the line annually. Operational costs include wages and benefits for employees, costs related to locomotive use and fees for mechanical and track inspections. 

In addition, it will cost nearly $17 million in the coming years to make necessary improvements to the line so that it meets federal safety standards, according to the petition. The improvements include repairs to five bridges on the line and track and road crossing replacements.

Between 2021 and 2025, rail traffic on the line averaged 403.6 cars annually. In 2022, 533 carloads of materials were transported on the line; in 2025, 259 carloads were transported.

Rail traffic volumes are expected to continue to decline with no opportunities to increase traffic, the petition said. The companies “have no reasonable expectation that traffic levels … will recover to a level that could support economically sustainable operations.”

Three companies – Beisser Lumber Co. in Grimes, CB&I Storage Tank Solutions in Clive, and Frontier Forest Products – have been the primary users of the line since 2021, according to the petition. A fourth user, Hutchinson Salt Co., has not used the line since 2024.

The petition noted that the businesses have other options available to them to transport materials including use of nearby highways and the Des Moines Industrial Transloading Facility at 357 SE 15th St. “No shipper will be left without reasonable transportation options,” the petition said.

‘Sad to see it go’

More than 20 years ago, Beisser Lumber acquired property next to the rail line in Grimes where it built a warehouse and retail store. The company anticipated that Norfolk Southern would likely abandon the line and began making contingency plans several years ago, David Ling, Beisser CEO, wrote in an email.

“We’ll certainly be sad to see it go,” Ling wrote. “The lumber industry has relied on rail almost since the rail lines were first established.”

The rail line allowed Beisser Lumber to take advantage of bulk buying opportunities, which it will continue to do at its facility in Coralville that receives service from a main line of Iowa Interstate Railroad, Ling wrote. “Moving material between all our locations is already part of our day-to-day operation, so this is a natural extension of how we already operate.”

In recent years, Beisser Lumber’s use of the Des Moines-to-Grimes rail has dropped significantly, according to the petition from the rail companies. In 2021, 201 rail cars delivered lumber to Beisser’s Grimes location; it dropped to 93 cars in 2025.

Grimes will continue to be a key part of Beisser’s operations, “and that’s not changing,” Ling wrote. The company, which in the past 75 years has grown from a single location in Fort Dodge to four sites, has 165 employees, 93 of whom work in Grimes. A recently opened millwork facility in Johnston will help ease truck traffic in Grimes, he wrote.

Officials with CB&I Storage Tank Solutions did not respond to requests for comment about the proposal to abandon the rail lines.

Arnold, the CEO of Frontier Forest Products, said his company, which has six employees in West Des Moines, has begun exploring whether to begin receiving lumber at the Des Moines transload facility, a move that will increase operating expenses.

“We’re just a small company and the extra money we’ll have to spend is a lot,” Arnold said. “We can do it for a while, but it’s not a long-term solution.”

Related story: What will happen to abandoned rail line?

More online:  Read the petition filed by Norfolk Southern Railway Co. asking to abandon the Grimes-to-Des Moines rail line.