Be sure you're not confusing two different services: the coal trains going to customers in Calif (one was in the San Jose area) which is burned as fuel with the coke imported into Richmond and destined for use in the steel plant in Geneva, Utah. Coal and coke are two slightly different forms of fuel which are used for slightly different purposes.

> We had a laugh at the time since only SP would be dumb enough to drag that lot up over the same dividing range twice just to cut the UP out of pulling it over the LA&SL. :)

This, my friend, is how competing RRs make money. One company hauls the commondity and garners the revenue from it while the other gets nothing. Being a governmental and political plaything, NZR, even in thr form it exists today, can be rightly accused of being a monopoly, not a competitive company.