WAF Wrote:
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> How many more mills were running when the NWP got
> out in 1984?

I can't say to NWP days other than former employees I worked with on Eureka Southern and published photos show at least one sizable train a day, maybe 50-75 cars. In addition, they ran a work train pretty much year round. When I was on EUKA, there were the following trains:

A road freight out of Scotia and Willits each morning except Sunday, crews traded trains at Island Mountain which was interesting since there wasn't a lot of room. It wasn't unusual to get tied up there for a while if neither train would clear as there was a very poor spur that you didn't dare put loads on. When the passenger train ran north on Saturday, the regular crew would take it out of Willits instead of the freight, trading crews at Island Mountain. Both crews would work on Sunday with the returning passenger coming south and the empties for the week going north. Typically these ran with just one GP38 unless the train exceed 20 loads.

The gravel train usually used one GP38 and an extra board crew. If one of the 38s wasn't available, they used the 70. For some reason I never caught this job but my friend worked it quite often. Train only ran when the barge was in for loading.

Two nightly locals ran except Sundays. One worked from Scotia using the inbound road power, the other ran from Korblex using the 70, running first to Korbel, then towards Samoa, then to Eureka where the trains traded cars. If the passenger train ran, then the Korblex local would work all the way through to Scotia and deadhead home. On Sunday night, the Scotia crew would run all the way north and then deadhead home. It wasn't unusual for the Korblex job not to have enough empties on hand or time to respot the Annie and Mary, so an extra crew would often have to make a trip in the morning.

In addition to the previously posted list by Jeff Moore:

>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.

I can add the following during late 1990 in Eureka Southern days:

If I recall, there might have been another closed mill site on the Carlotta branch or nearby, also maybe another near Braecut and in Eureka, and I recall at least two standing long unused on the A&MR.

5.5 - Just north of the Eureka street running below the mansion was a bulk cement distributor.
6.5 - There was a propane distributor inside the wye at Arcata.
8. GP at Samoa got a couple boxes of pulp once in a while, there was also a truck transfer in Eureka yard (clay?) that delivered to GP.
9.5 - Costa Trucking at Korblex was a truck reload into boxcars for some mill in the area that did not have rail service.
10. We switched Blue Lake Lumber directly, the "reload" just past Blue Lake at Korbel was for Simpson.

All the above were good for a car or two, sometimes more, almost every work night except: Propane at Arcata, G-P at Manila/Eureka yard, Carlotta (3x a week?).

There was some interesting switching on this. Since the Annie and Mary usually worked at night in the rain, it was standard practice to drop a fusee off on crossings some some local idiot wouldn't come plowing into the side of an empty flat in your train.

Emmerson (Sierra Pacific) had a car or two almost every night, but there wasn't a runaround and you rarely had to go to Samoa. You pulled the loads, spotted the empties, then shoved the loads up near the bridge. Then the engineer would duck himself back into Emmerson and the conductor would bleed off the loads and do a gravity drop hopefully stopping before the highway and clear of the switch. Likewise any cement loads had to be kicked up the hill and then allowed to roll by, then it took a switchback move to spot them using the old harbor line for the lead.

There were a couple things that affected Eureka Southern's traffic levels at this time. An investment group had wrestled control of PALCO away from the family that owned it attracted by the timber reserves that had been managed under a long term sustainable cut plus an overfunded pension plan. The "investors" had financed it with junk bonds, so they were cutting everything they could as fast as possible. I don't know if the Carlotta mill was original PALCO, but the mill at Fortuna had been bought to increase production by the junk bond idiots. There were also some improvements to the harbor that allowed many of the producers to switch to barge traffic. EUKA had a windfall for a little while running rock from a quarry at Island Mountain for the port project. Seems to me that much of G-P's lumber production went by barge to San Diego or Mexico for air drying. There may have been other mills shipping by barge, but there was and as far as I know still is a steady flow of whole logs being loaded for shipment out.

I don't think the tree hugging herbologists have to worry about the tracks being rebuilt in the Eel River canyon, there just isn't manufacturing/distribution left to generate the rail traffic to support a railroad. What little is left can be shipped by barge, highway (via 299 to rail reload at Redding) or smuggled. Maybe if the new NWP can get to Willits they might pick up some reload there, but will they go that far? Is there any potential rail traffic left at Willits or off the Cal Western?