Slow orders, often with miles of 10 mph operation, were common in the Eel River Canyon, especially in the rainy seasons, and for summer maintenance, which never ended on that stretch of the railroad. I only went out to the Canyon once when the trains were running, in the fall during the late 70's, and the one train I saw was crawling through miles of slow orders.

I seem to recall a 25 mph for much of that segment from one of the timetables I used to have. Tonnage on the lumber trains was heavy, power was weak, curvature was severe, and there were some pretty good grades on all of the NWP, so nothing was going to move very fast on the NWP, and the Canyon was probably some of the slowest running.

Once the SMART project is done, it will make possible some of the highest freight or passenger speeds ever seen on the NWP......