Long story short...

When the Navy set up the inland area of the base to go into caretaker status, there was a series of sessions at the counry level to explore interim uses of the facilities. One proposal was to preserve the historic railway corridor - originally the Bay Point and Clayton railroad that had been built to serve the Cowell Cement Company facilties.

The Department Of Defense turned down all of the requests for use for the base including anything to do with the operations on the existing rail infrastructure. The locomotives that had been there were all surplused out. As the fright cars will not pass interchange inspections, they sit where they have since the Navy ended operations in the Inland area of the CNWS.

Suspect that at some point soon, all of those cars will all be sold for scrap and the railroad as well. The Army now operates the Tidal area to serve it's few dates for ship loading/unloading at the docks.