When Mike Williams bought the operating assets almost five years ago now, his stated intentions for the property included car storage, car repair, and possibly a foray back into the passenger business. His crews and then some sporadic help from the Yreka Western carried limited operations and activities on through 2012 and 2013, during which time they moved a good deal of scrap off the property and sent all of the dinner train cars off to Idaho. The last time anything moved on the road was around the third week of July 2013, when the #37 delivered two ex-SP ballast hoppers to Mt. Shasta City, one of which moved on the Lake Railway and the other remains in the yard, though UP has moved it around a few times. There was a Railroad Materials Salvage (another Williams company) crew in McCloud through about September 2013 scrapping old and wreck damaged railcars, resulting in several monumental piles of scrap, but after a certain point they got back in their trucks and drove away, and that was the last time anything's happened there since. Three years now since that time...

As for what happens to the equipment, it all depends now on what the Williams Group eventually decides to do with the property. There are a few pieces there that might be sold, though given the amount of vandalism I suspect anything that might come out of there would need a whole lot of work. There has been sporadically consistent talk that one to all three of the SD38s might depart, with the shops at St. Maries the most commonly identified destination- at least one of them was supposed to move within a month, but that was about three months ago now, and its still there. McCloud Partners, the group that now owns the old sawmill site, would dearly love to get the railroad to support their planned development of that site, and there has been at least communication between the various involved parties, which at this point still includes 4-Rails Inc. (Forbis family), as they still own the land and buildings.

Bottom line, I expect the situation to remain as is until either (a) the Williams Group pulls the plug on it, or (b) McCloud Partners or someone affiliated or otherwise associated with them) successfully buys what remains. It would be challenging at best to get anything going up there again, but not entirely out of the question either. The remaining railroad has never been formally abandoned and would need to go through that process should it come to that, the end result of that would almost certainly be a shiny new 20-or so mile addition to the Great Shasta Rail Trail.

Until then, it waits.

Oh yeah, one more thing...

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Jeff Moore
Elko, NV