Here's a photo I took on April 18, 1996, TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, of a "rare mileage" special train operated by Clark Johnson and Nona Hill's High Iron Travel company that ran on the Coos Bay Branch of the then Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad, which was a spin-off of a Southern Pacific branch line. This was before CORP was owned by Genesee & Wyoming so their locomotives with their distinctive paint scheme had yet to show up on the property.

The line between the outskirts of Eugene and Coos Bay has since been spun off yet again and is now owned by the Port of Coos Bay and operated as the Coos Bay Rail Line (CBRL). The line came close to being abandoned. This was a rare example of where the pro-railroad interests won out over the pro-trail interests.

[www.portofcoosbay.com]

The photo shows our train a little north of North Bay waiting for the swing bridge over Coos Bay to fully close before we could proceed. I knew that until the bridge was fully closed and locked that our train wouldn't be going anywhere and that gave me and some others some time to hop off and grab a quick photo As you can see, the bridge is just about ready to accept rail traffic, so I re-boarded the train shortly after taking this photo. On April 17-18 we made a round trip from Eugene to Coos Bay and on April 20th we rode from Eugene to Medford. The "new mileage" began at Springfield Junction. This was when the Siskiyou Line still had lower quadrant semaphore signals.