In response to "old dawg" and "duh"....never ceases to amaze me how people on the far ends of the political spectrum choose to see everything through whatever their political lens happens to be. For the record, we are NOT talking about any lines owned by any government entity here, Williams Group/Midwest Pacific Rail Net & Logistics owns both STMA and BGCM. And how "duh" can operate under any impression that Idaho is a bastion of left leaning politics or thinking is way, way, way beyond me and shows at best basic ignorance of that state.

If we review additional facts and history, BGCM maintained operations to Kamiah until 2016, when one of the two medium sized sawmills there shut down, and the economics of continuing running that far for the traffic the one remaining mill provided simply didn't work out. "Just Saying" and "Mr Potato" are on to something, specifically that the factors allowing a giant mill to support 25 miles of railroad do not translate into the ability of a smaller mill to support three times the amount of track. So they expanded the reload and are doing car storage now. And a handful of news reports indicates the repairs to the Jaype line would have cost far, far more than the monies available in the TIGER grant, which is at least one reason why that effort failed.

Despite his history in the salvage business, my impression of Mike Williams and his shortlines are that he really does want to be in the operating game. STMA, what's left of BGCM, and Dakota Southern at least for the moment are two examples of railroads he is successfully operating, and his Washington & Idaho seemed to successfully run the Washington State owned lines until his contract ended. I don't know anything about the present status of three of his Midwestern properties (Fremont Northern/Iowa River/Ozark Valley). My overall impression of the rest of his operations are that he develops grand plans for revitalization and future operations, but his organization is simply too small and spread over too large of a geographic area to be effective. What I end up seeing are fits and starts of activity followed by long periods of inactivity as the organization focuses its resources somewhere else.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV