I'll take a shot at a couple answers...

The hoppers are remnants of several wrecks caused by poor track conditions. No idea when/if those cars will ever be picked up.

The line is now being operated by Frontier Rail as an agent for Lake County under the name Lake Railroad. The GE is Lake's sole power. They keep the unit in Alturas. My understanding is that they normally make the round trip in one day, usually Fridays, which coincides with the days that UP operates down from Alturas. But this information could be dated. The unit lays over in Alturas between runs. Lake is doing quite a bit of track work, and they keep their employees busy doing that between runs.

Lake serves two shippers in Lakeview, Cornerstone Minerals (which does operate a perlite mine in the Paisley area) and a sawmill that is part of the Collins Pine family. The mine is somewhere in the general Paisley area.

The name of the proposed pipeline is Ruby Pipeline, and it is running (as described) from Wyoming across Utah and Nevada to a connection with the PG&E pipelines around Oregon. FERC is solidly behind the project and is pushing it hard.

More information can be found on my website at:

[www.trainweb.org]

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV