At the time of the 1998 storms, NCRA was in the process of bringing in John Darling and his Northwestern Pacific Railway Company LLC to take over operations of the NWP under contract. Darling's forces were the ones that did the work to reopen part of the south end in early 2001, but then only operated the line for a couple months before NCRA evicted them in a contract dispute.

One final note, quite a few of the storm repair bills from 1998 remained unpaid for quite some time afterwards, NCRA finally received some special funding to satisfy those creditors.

Lastly, when the last train ran there were 11 forest products plants operating in the Eureka area shipping over the railroad. Only three remain today.

1. Pacific Lumber Company, Scotia- a small company maintains operations in a part of the sawmill, the rest either sits vacant or now houses a non-timber related business.
2. Eel River Sawmills, Stone- Closed, buildings razed.
3. Pacific Lumber Company, Fortuna- Closed, buildings razed.
4. Pacific Lumber Company, Carlotta- Closed, buildings razed.
5. Schmidbauer Lumber, Eureka- still operating
6. Arcata Redwood, Braecut- very recently closed.
7. Sierra Pacific Industries, Manila- still operating
8. Georgia Pacific, Samoa- closed, most buildings razed.
9. Louisiana Pacific flakeboard plant, Korbelex- closed, buildings partially demolished.
10. Blue Lake Forest Products, Glendale (reload at Korbelex)- closed, buildings razed.
11. Simpson Timber, Korbel (reload on Arcata Bottoms)- closed a month ago.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV