From the tone of that article, I'm wondering if Iowa Pacific (IP) is really as bankrupt as we've assumed (and is rumored), or if they just had to get out from under a money losing contract. Clearly there are financial problems at IP, else they would have continued, and given reports of layoffs and curtailed operations the issues are serious. But is the company as a whole going belly up?
The entire company is going belly up. And has been for the last two years. For an example (not the Hoosier State) the Piedmont and Northern train to Christmas town. (For the record very hard to lose money on Christmas trains)First year of operation (2015) ran too many trains and ended up losing money.
Second year
In November prior to his trains running he didn't pay for the lot he was using for his station in a nice neighborhood. Forced to move to a rough neighborhood for it.
Trains supposed to start Black Friday. Unable to start due to no equipment available.
December rescheduled week one (dec first week) forced to cancel because the hodge podge of card weren't ready. Disgusting cars as well that didn't match and mechanically were awful.
Second week of December. New start date. Locomotives ordered still weren't there ended up leasing a MP15E from NS and a CSX SD50-2. Ran first trips.
Third week of December the promised F units finically arrived. But arrived inoperable.
Fourth week still running with the leased freight engines.
That's the state of IP on what should be a profitable and easy to run train