Rather than add to the thread below, I'll start a new one.

I've seen this day coming for a while now. A year ago Jeff himself told the McCloud Community Services District that the dinner train was a losing proposition without any freight traffic. In a lot of ways, I'm amazed how long this operations lasted.

Comments like those made by Key Route Ken (or someone using his name) on the thread below do a great disservice to the Forbis family and the men and women who kept the railroad going as long as it has.

A cursory review of the McCloud over the last century tells the tale. McCloud cheated death at many points in its history. The entire McCloud River operation lasted past the 1920's only because Red River Lumber Company was in desperate need of cash and sold timberlands to McCloud River Lumber Company that allowed the McCloud sawmill to last as long as it did. The companies survived past the middle 1950's because Fruit Growers sold them the Burney tract. U.S. Plywood ended the logging railroad in 1963/1964, but enough finished lumber traffic remained to keep the railroad viable.

By all rights and reasons we should have had this funeral in 1979, right after Champion International closed the McCloud mill. At no point since then has the McCloud River Railroad made any sort of rational economic sense. The only reason it survived was because of Itel ownership and their willingness to cover operating losses, coupled with the track rehab grant back in 1982. Itel exiting the railroad business probably should have killed this operation in 1991/1992. I seriously doubt there are many, if not any, people other than Jeff Forbis who would have purchased this company as it existed and then kept it in operation this long. If you look at the basic rules for what it takes to keep a shortline railroad viable, the McCloud in the past thirty years has never even come close. The McCloud Railway never had the cash flow to make the kind of continuous investments railroads require, a fact that became very painfully obvious in the last 3-4 years they went to Burney. Jeff and his family invested a lot of money into the passenger business in 1995-1997, and that alone is what gave the remaining railroad another three and a half years of life.

All this being said, the available media article does not specify the ultimate fait of the railroad. Jeff states that he hopes someone else can come in, buy it, and keep it going. This suggests that the future of this operation is now entirely dependent on a new owner, which is still a possibility. My gut feeling is that the railroad is done for if no buyer can be found, especially now that the only substantial revenue source is going away. As things now stand, the McCloud Railway is still engaged in providing common carrier service over the trackage between McCloud and Mt. Shasta City, and scrapping that line will require initiation of the full abandonment process, which could last up to three or four years. The first notice of such an action would appear in the Classifies section of the local papers.

Finally, I've watched with increasing amazement over the last several years the basic ignorance shown by most fans as to what it actually takes to keep a railroad running. Jeff's been heavily criticised for how he handled the railroad- I've been guilty of some of that myself- but in the end he kept the railroad running for another fourteen years in what really was a hopeless situation.

If this is the end, I will miss this operation and will forever treasure the many memories I have.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV