As stated, this wreck occurred about 1997. The North Coast Railroad Authority and the short-lived Northwestern Pacific Railroad Authority had just purchased and assumed operation of the railroad south of Willits the year before, and the NCRA changed the name of their North Coast Railroad to the Northwestern Pacific and started running the entire Arcata to Schellville line. NWP leased eight locomotives from Omnitrax- four GP-9s, four SD-9s, all painted in the SP-inspired black widow scheme- to supplement the ex-CCT GP-7 #70 and the six leased ex-SP GP-9s they already had on hand from the North Coast Railroad days.

What happened here was that two or three of the NWP locomotives brought a train up from the south earlier in the day, after which they were tied down at the wye for the night. A crew took one of the locomotives up to the yard and started switching, and somehow the locomotives back at the wye started rolling north, let themselves out onto the main, and thankfully had not generated much speed before plowing into the engine switching the yard. The engineer of the switch crew was looking north at the time of collision and never saw the runaway units coming- he suffered thankfully relative minor injuries, but the accident did damage the two locomotives beyond repair.

The City of Willits started litigating NCRA for maintaining a public nuisance a few years ago, at which point the agency moved the two locomotives behind the remaining passenger cars still in the yard and then built a fence around the equipment to try keeping the vandals and vagrants from continuing to occupy the equipment. The most recent imagery for Willits on Google Earth is dated 17 August 2011, and the two locomotives are still present in the yard as of that time. In looking back through historical imagery, the two were moved from the tail of the wye to where they now sit sometime between 29 August 2006 and 5 June 2009...quite a range there...

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV