Mike, I assume Hemphill’s organization intends to attempt an OFA in connection with NWPY’s application to discontinue common carrier operations over the line from the Sonoma/Mendocino county line to Outlet? That seems to be the only NWP/NCRA/SMART action in front of the STB ripe for an OFA at the moment, and for that matter the only action pending in front of the board affecting the line south of Willits. That being said…though NWP had authority to provide service on that line, it never actually offered such service, as the FRA emergency order that closed the line in 1998 has never been lifted, as NWPY states in their discontinuance application. The OFA process is designed to give parties opportunities to either subsidize continued operations of an existing carrier or otherwise force the sale of a line subject to abandonment to the party filing the OFA; I can’t wait to see how this plays out on a line that has been closed by a FRA emergency order for getting close to 23 years now and needs many hundreds of millions of dollars of work to restore service, and where the common carrier service authority is presently held by a contractor to a government agency landlord that is in the process of being dissolved. Does Hemphill’s group have that kind of money they can bring yo the table to demonstrate their financial ability to “preserve”, or in this case restore, rail service?

And the figures I want to see are actual carloads each of those 21 potential shippers shipped when they theoretically had rail service before November 1998, and why they would ship more (or anything) now if they hadn’t used rail back then should service be restored. And given the old rules of thumb that a shortline needs to move 100 cars annually per year per each mile of track operated, that 400 carloads from Cloverdale equates to keeping about 4 miles of railroad healthy. If each of those 21 prospective shippers are good for 400 cars a year that’s 8,400 loads a year, enough to sustain an 84 mile railroad, and now we’re talking something closer to viability, assuming of course SMART is willing to put enough into its shiny new freight operations to attract the traffic and gets interchange cooperation and service levels from UP to keep any new traffic generated, and that capital costs for rebuilding the line aren’t charged against future freight revenues. What’s the actual plan to make this an economically viable and sustainable railroad?

And finally going back to the original text of the Great Redwood Trail act, it specifies that the line south of Willits will be conveyed to SMART at or around the time NCRA is dissolved, and that the trail will exist with rail on that stretch. Still doesn’t address what happens after that time, and the general questions of legality of a trail corridor being built adjacent to a rail line haven’t yet been fully tested either. Overall it appears to me that Hdmphill’s group is ahead of its time.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV