To answer some of the questions brought up I offer the following.Yes we should keep trains running where ever possible. When this rail line was abandoned the first time in the mid 1980's I was the only Public Official in Humboldt County to fight abandonment because I believe in trains. Yes if the rail can come back then the trail has to give unless it is built rails with trails in the first place. All kinds of rail use are proposed for the Willits south line, but the Eel River Canyon is too expensive to rebuild a stable, functioning, and reliable rail. In fact if we do not rail bank this section and some others soon we will loose the option to ever run rail again due to reversion of rail easements over private land. So for those that want the rail back it is either come up with the hundreds and hundreds of millions for reopening and then millions to rebuild after big winter storms like now, or railbank it and protect the future option. Yes I said that it would cost 300-400 million to build the trail, but most of those funds would be for permits, designs, and construction of watershed restoration and erosion control measures, invasive plant control, railroad waste cleanup and anadromous fish passage work. These are costs related to the unmitigated damages from the railroad and its erosion contributing features. They are not trail costs. The actual cost of trail and related facilities would be in the millions, not hundreds of millions as some have suggested. The reason I have used these high estimates is because the restoration has to happen no matter what. We cannot simply walk away from this disaster. It is time for the Eel River to get some serious restoration re-investment after over a hundred years of taking the capitol from the bank. Realistically this will take hundreds of millions for restoration and conversion to a trail.