I think he mentioned something about actually seeing signs of rail use.

While I have expressed serious doubt's that we will ever see through trains of any kind on the old SDAE, or anything close to resembling a double stack container train, without a "minimum" investment probably well north of $100 million in rehab and upgrade, there have been proposals and speculation about the potential for aggregate traffic on that end. And, there was even a hyrail aggregate operation using dump trucks operating for a while, on that end of the line. Off and on for the last 20 years, there have been musings of proposals to mine aggregate on a scale, that might potentially make use of the eastern end for rail shipment, but so far it hasn't happened as far as I know.

I know nothing of the current status of Baja Rail, or what intentions and/or investments they might be making on that segment, but we have a few that follow this, so maybe we'll all get an update?

I think that a possible solution for any "reconnect" upgrade, at the RR Museum, in Campo, would be similar to the one that was looked at with the Fillmore and Western, in the Santa Paula Branch line reconnect study. Which would have built a new modern track adjacent to the segments used by the F&W. And, in any event, a modern line would have needed a new parallel bridge over the river levee, west of Fillmore, parallel to the existing line, which would not need flood gates and be prone to service disruptions.