North Iowa family has trains in their veins

When Arthur Sabin was growing up as an orphan in Minnesota, his sanctuary was the railyard. He would take his rest in various cabooses and benevolent train crews would look after him. 

Although he found solace in the railroad in those hard-scrabble days of his youth, his son, Dan, said that it took some time for him to find work on the trains. It wasn't until 1944, when he was around 30, that Arthur got going. Once he started up, Arthur didn't stop until he'd logged about three decades worth of work that would often run him from his home in Manly to either Cedar Rapids, Des Moines or Minneapolis. The Rock Island Line engineer was passionate enough about the job that his family couldn't help but follow in his footsteps.

"I rode with him many times. It was a lot of fun. He was a very serious guy but he taught me a lot. I was the youngest of six kids, five of us were boys, and we all started our careers on the railroad," Dan Sabin said.

Continue reading here.