I guess that trains of 30-40 cars per day could be "shown" to "justify" the "bare bones" and extremely optimistic $30 million expenditure, but that would be very iffy, and I would consider any such speculative option as very high risk for either a potential private or public expenditure.

Of course, one might ask, why would you need to spend that money at all, if all you have to do is add 30-40 cars to the existing daily freight movement on LOSSAN? This kind of demand could easily be handled on the existing connection without any significant investment in new infrastructure, except for service connections.

All of the full restoration/improvement SDA&E scenarios, which have come in as much more costly than the bare bones ($140 million to $1 billion) would appear to require very significant increase in car-loading to justify (a minimum of several daily trains of at least 70 o 100 cars) those investment levels. The trouble is that these volumes could also be handled easily (off peak) by LOSSAN, as well, with only minimal capital costs compared with restoration/improvement of the SDA&E route.

I've seen things like "trash trains" and the development of supposed natural gas terminals off the coast of Baja, and other "what if" scenarios that would potentially create the purported demand for restoration/improvement of the SDA&E routing. These types of things might represent "game changers", but many of these options are still highly speculative, driven more by hype than any tangible proposals. And, quite frankly, I've heard of these "game changers" for over twenty years and none has yet materialized, and there may also be better alternatives and locations for these "game changing" options, as well