A railyard at night is already a spooky place, and even more so with the fog that’s settled on Samoa and the shoulders of the roundhouse, blurring the riveted and rust-streaked tops of 19th century train cars and tall steam donkeys. An open doorway offers a glimpse of old double-handled saws hanging on a wall. […]
trains
Posted inArts + Scene
All Aboard: Vintage Train Video
Everybody loves trains. OK, maybe not packed commuter trains. But if you aren’t charmed by the cow catchers on black locomotives or Orient Express-style dining cars from the turn of the century, we can’t hang out. The volunteers of the Timber Heritage Association are out at the Roundhouse in Samoa most weekends restoring regal and […]
Posted inNews
Train Coming?
The Upstate RailConnect Committee got thrown quite a curveball at its recent meeting in Weaverville. The committee, a working group of representatives from Humboldt, Tehama and Trinity counties and other interested parties, has been working for a couple of years now on figuring how to cobble together some $300,000 for a massive study to determine […]
Posted inNews
Ruins
Pictures of decay — abandoned structures slumping to ground, engulfed in flora or proudly, rustily erect — are a trope now, but that’s OK. They’re fascinating. They combine history, our reverence of engineering feats, our fears of death and erasure. We get to rubberneck at a slow moving train wreck — nature and time joining […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
First, Borders. Then Rails.
Editor: Humboldt County has transportation nemeses: a harbor nonviable for commercial deep sea vessels, and the Eel River’s defunct railbed (“The Disappearing Railroad Blues,” May 16). Sometimes flexibility changes perspective. Humboldt and Mendocino are long counties. Conditions call for economic vision. Suggestion: Weigh amending Humboldt’s southern and eastern boundary lines — the southern portion of […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Bay [T]rail Update No. 6
Publisher note: If I had my reporter’s hat on, I could tell you a lot of behind-the-scenes drama and painfully slow progress on the Bay Trail, the link in the California Coastal Trail between Eureka and Arcata. But I can’t. I’m a Bay [T]rail Advocate — one of the lobbyists. From the beginning of my […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
More Rail Reactions
Editor: Found Mr. Burns’ article enjoyable and informative. But one minor nit to pick. The map graphic appears to misidentify the Van Duzen River as the North Fork of the Eel. Though the headwaters of each are very close, the North Fork proceeds south and joins the main branch of the Eel near Spyrock in […]
Posted inNews
The Disappearing Railroad Blues
Getting trains into Humboldt County has never been easy. The common shorthand for our region’s isolation is “behind the redwood curtain,” but those fuzzy-barked spires were never a barrier for rails. In fact, the lucrative lumber from logged old growths is what attracted railroad companies here in the first place. No, it’s the ground beneath […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Should public funds be used to study an East-West rail line?
Some years back, when I called the North-South railroad and its backers Idealistic Dreamers Involved in Our Transportation System (IDIOTS for brevity), you might have thought that I was anti-railroad. Such is not the case. A railroad would do wonders for our local economy. What I am against is using public funds on an endeavor […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Should public funds be used to study an East-West rail line?
On the issue of an East-West rail line, there are those who promote the notion of “no public funding for the feasibility study at all,” or “if there is a need, let the private sector do the study.” Those comments suggest that no state or federal funds should be used in a feasibility study. If […]
