Once again, Jordan is spot on with his assessment of the problem at the "new" Hwy 93 crossing. Some unusual business happened during the vendor selection -- something about the original bids being too high, and then only one vendor was offered an opportunity to re-submit his bid. The other guy had just donated more than $300,000 worth of track surfacing to Mark and his payment for all the other work he'd done was delayed several weeks by Mr. Bassett for no logical reason. Like I said -- unusual stuff.

The original grant amount, if memory serves, was indeed around $800,000. It had been written to include the purchase of a tamper and a ballast regulator. Mr. Bassett was of the mind he could get them for about $150,000 total. Yeah, anyhow... Leonard and I advised him to drop the idea of a tamper because the ROI on a decent one would run out several years and cost money he never seems to have. Leonard cut a tentative deal with the local CAT dealer to sell Mr. Bassett a demo 4-wheel drive backhoe with highrail gear and drives for brush cutting and brooming for a really good price. Besides -- the backhoe NNRy had then was well beyond useable for anything. To my knowledge, NNRy ended up with nothing except a bad crossing and another tribute to Mr. Bassett's fine business management skills. The NNRy is going away, he's going to ride it into the ground, and the Board appears to be along for the ride.