I was one of the semi-naysayers but mainly because I didn't trust the public agencies involved to let something happen, and the SMART situation created and still creates some concern. But a short line serving freight customers up to Windsor (maybe even as far as Ukiah or Willits someday though past Cloverdale it gets Really Expensive) has always made sense. There ARE customers in the south end (which I pointed out several times), and more will join the ranks as rail operations become more noticeable and prove to be reliable. Though it'll never make a ton of money I suspect that the short line NWP will break even or better especially considering that they didn't have to pay for the rehab and if SMART ever gets started they won't have to pay for much heavy maintenance either.

As far as the cost is concerned, compare it to typical highway jobs: $50-100 million is common for something of any size (say, the fixup between Novato & Petaluma that will probably cost more than that). For the money spent on the railroad we got several bridges rehabbed and almost 100 miles of railroad rebuilt to a serviceable standard - not bad really.

Glad to see the customers are popping up as expected. If the salesperson (NWP probably can't afford a sales staff) is on the ball we'll gradually see more of them, maybe even resulting in a few productive jobs in the area (industrial & shipping jobs, not just office and retail and commuters). For the economists in the group, what's the "multiplier" effect of the railroad? Is there anyplace from Windsor south where NWP could host a small intermodal transload operation (the modern equivalent of the team track) convenient to 101? For that matter, even with their current customers (mostly inbound feed grain it seems), how many trucks are already gone from 101 and 12/121 and 37 because of their use of the railroad?