I was a student at Humboldt State in Arcata from 1994-2000, and thus had a front row seat to those last years. I say each night because the locals did operate almost always at night.

When the Eureka Southern started up, they based operations out of the old NWP Eureka yard. When Jerry Gregg took over as trustee after EUKA declared bankruptcy at the end of 1986, one of his first moves was to move the northern operation base down to Scotia. By the time I got there, the North Coast Railroad operated two locals north of Scotia, the "North Local" and "South Local", both of which came on duty about dusk. The South Local worked north from Scotia, switching industries along the way (including the Carlotta branch), while the North Local started south from Korblex. The two locals would meet in the Eureka yards usually around 1-2 in the morning to swap cars, after which they would return towards their starting places, where they would tie up before sunrise. Under this scheme, a car loaded at any of the shippers on the north end one day would be delivered to the California Northern by the next day.

Power for the North Local was almost always the old CCT #70, it laid over in daylight hours tied down on the mainline next to the Louisiana-Pacific flakeboard plant. The two man crew would start as noted about dusk, their normal routine was to first switch out the Blue Lake Forest Products reload at a trucking company a little north of the L-P plant, then it would pull loads from L-P, then head south towards downtown Arcata. The conductor typically drove a truck from place to place, meeting the train where needed to help switch. Two branches radiated out of Arcata, one running a couple miles out onto the bottoms to an old sawmill that served as the reload for the Simpson mill up at Korbel, the other was the Samoa branch already discussed. Once the local had all the outbound loads together they would head south, pausing to switch out the old Arcata Redwood plant between Arcata and Eureka on the way south. They would then retrace all these steps on the way north, delivering empty cars as they went.

The closest I have come to writing anything about the NWP is a chapter in one of my books from last year, California's Lumber Shortline Railroads:

[www.arcadiapublishing.com]

Chapter does not get into quite this level of detail, and I made a few small errors here and there in the book, but I'm generally pleased with it.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV