Pretty good story all in all. And, I'm sure that all of the trolls and conspiracy theorist's will give us all of their inside scoop and usual line of horse crap about the drugs and such.... But, the business plan seemed a wee bit weak as to the rail traffic "carload" base that they think that they have there now, that would be profitable enough to restore the service. Of course, if they loaded custom pre-cleared TOFC at Campo and a customs inspection point were to be established there, that might be a much different story.

The US and Mexico really do need another truck POE down there anyhow, and shifting eastbound traffic to I-8 with a shorter border crossing wait at Campo for trucks would help alleviate the congestion at Otay Mesa and in San Diego itself. I went on an ICE tour of Otay Mesa back then when I was doing some work on cross border truck congestion which was really quite interesting.

To go east with TOFC might be possible with a "basic" level restoration of the line, with current tunnel clearances (although I may be wrong about that?). But, double stacks and auto racks would require a huge additional investment to connect up to the UP at Plaster City. As I seem to recall, from the last SDAE restoration study I was asked to review and comment on back in (IIRC?) the early 2000's, the "alternative" with full scale "modern" mainline upgrade, with CTC, and full double stack/auto rack clearances was estimated to be somewhere north of at least $600 million.

There is a bit of potential aggregate traffic out around Jacumba that was mentioned in there phasing of upgrades, in the staff report posted earlier on this subject. There have been previous on again/off again high rail aggregate trucks using that segment.

As these articles go, SDUT has had some pretty good reporting on this over the years.