I'm still having trouble squaring what trackwalker says with what I saw last summer.

Granted, I was there one day...but in that one day I saw a ballast regulator sitting on the main line in the Pit River canyon, LOTS of freshly replaced ties in that stretch, along with a substantial amount of fresh ballast...a little north of that a hi-rail equipped excavator truck and a pickup and a small crew out doing some work on the road...at Davis Creek, a flatcar loaded with new ties and several more pieces of track equipment...and just north of Davis Creek, Frontier's Brant truck rolling southward with another flatcar of new ties. By my count, that's at least a couple maintenance-of-way crews actively engaged in improving the property on a hot summer day in early July. And the amount of very recently replaced ties in the roadbed said they'd been at it a while.

"Trackwalker", what am I missing in this picture? Please help me understand. From what you've said in this thread and in others, you very obviously have an axe to grind against Frontier. Late 2005/early 2006, Lake County was going on the ground someplace almost every trip...if what you say about current Lake Railway operations are true, they're really not doing any better than the Lake County did.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV