I should have noted that this is kind of a dream come true for Sierra Northern's Mike Hart and his old partner Rick Hamman. The two got started on the Eccles & Eastern paper RR that proposed to run sand trains from Olympia to Watsonville Jct., and eventually through Los Gatos via a rebuilt line over the old South Pacific Coast/SP grade. They changed the name to Sierra Pacific Coast Railway, which included the Sierra in proposed operations from one side of the state to the other. The Santa Cruz segment was stillborn (the sand pits were eventually shuttered anyway), and I believe the company went bankrupt with Hart picking up the pieces and turning it into what he has today. He has been steadily building a portfolio of operations that effectively mirror their original proposals, minus the SC segment...until now.

I attended a meeting involving Hart and pro-rail trail types a couple of years ago here in town. He was talking about building a maintenance facility up in Davenport for their equipment, running excursions, etc. An interesting side note is that if he chooses to use ex-ATSF locomotives out of his current roster, they will join Big Trees' ex-ATSF CF7s in roaming old SP rails in Santa Cruz County.