The Surface Transportation Board on Thursday denied a petition to abandon a 40-mile railroad line in Mendocino County, ruling that the corridor retains potential for freight service and must remain part of the nation’s interstate rail network.
The decision is a victory for the Mendocino Railway, which owns the line, and marks a departure from earlier rulings that allowed the former North Coast Railroad Authority — now the Great Redwood Trail Agency — to convert portions of its rail line into a trail.
The North Coast Railroad Authority first signaled its intent to abandon its 145-mile line from Willits to Eureka nearly five years ago. Rail service north of Schellville and Napa Junction had already been under a federal emergency embargo for two decades.
“There has thus been no freight rail traffic on any portion of the Line at issue in this proceeding since at least 1998,” the agency wrote in a 2021 filing, arguing that retaining the corridor for nonexistent freight service imposed unsustainable costs. Rehabilitating the line, it estimated, would cost between $100 million and $600 million, while landslides and washouts continued to damage the route.
In 2022, the board allowed abandonment to proceed after determining that Mendocino Railway lacked the roughly $12.7 million it said it would need to acquire and rehabilitate a 13-mile segment.
The dispute resurfaced in April 2024, when the Great Redwood Trail Agency sought approval to abandon 40 miles of track between Fort Bragg and Willits owned by Mendocino Railway. GRTA argued that no interstate freight shipments have originated or terminated on the line since Mendocino Railway acquired it in 2004 and that market studies show insufficient demand to justify full restoration.
Abandonment, GRTA said, was necessary to advance the 316-mile Great Redwood Trail along the Northwestern Pacific Railroad corridor, as required by state law.
The Surface Transportation board disagreed.
“GRTA has not satisfied the heavy burden to justify removing the MRY Line from the interstate rail network against the carrier’s wishes,” the decision states.
“This corridor remains a vital public asset for Mendocino County,” said Robert Jason Pinoli, President and CEO of Mendocino Railway. “We appreciate the Board’s thoughtful review. Our focus now is simple: protect the corridor, continue investing in it, and work constructively with regional partners on long-term solutions.”
Board’s Rationale
The board rejected GRTA’s argument that the adjacent federal embargo effectively strips the line of interstate status. An embargo temporarily relieves a railroad of service obligations, the board wrote, but does not sever a line from the national rail network absent formal abandonment.
It also found that Mendocino Railway had taken concrete steps toward restoring service, including securing a $31.4 million federal loan to rehabilitate a collapsed tunnel east of Fort Bragg, investing more than $30 million over two decades, and reaching a preliminary agreement with Grist Creek Aggregates to ship at least 400 annual carloads of aggregate once repairs are complete.
That future potential, the board concluded, outweighs GRTA’s trail objectives.
The decision also emphasized that a recreational trail does not necessarily require eliminating rail service. A “rails-with-trails” arrangement could allow both uses within the same right-of-way, so long as train operations are not impeded.
What Comes Next
Rail industry groups backed Mendocino Railway, while the Pacific Legal Foundation argued the board lacks authority to grant abandonment applications filed by non-carriers. The board declined to resolve that question, denying the petition on substantive grounds instead.
In separate statements, two board members suggested possible regulatory changes that could provide an alternative path for trail preservation. A pending rulemaking petition filed by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Interior in December 2024 would allow railbanking through the board’s discontinuance authority rather than requiring full abandonment.
For now, however, the Mendocino Railway line remains part of the interstate rail system — and the Great Redwood Trail faces a significant federal obstacle.
(Mendolocal.news)
Mark Scaramella Notes: Ms. Cox quotes the old NCRA management in 2021 saying: “‘There has thus been no freight rail traffic on any portion of the Line at issue in this proceeding since at least 1998,’ arguing that retaining the corridor for nonexistent freight service imposed unsustainable costs. Rehabilitating the line, it estimated, would cost between $100 million and $600 million, while landslides and washouts continued to damage the route.”
The timing of that statement of the obvious from the (defunct) NCRA is hilarious. The Northcoasts Democrats, ensconsed in the bowels of the NCRA for decades milked the non-existent “railroad” boondoggle going all the way back to when they used state money to buy it in the 1980s, insisting that the “train” was viable when everyone but them knew otherwise. But when State Senator Mike McGuire and this generation of Democrats dreamed up the Great Redwood Boondoggle to replace the old NCRA Democrats, the new generation of Demo-boondogglers suddenly and conveniently discovered that the railroad was dead. In fact, the only reason the NCRA-Dems kept saying the train was viable was to keep the State track maintenance money flowing to the NCRA, much of which went to former Democrat Congressman Doug Bosco’s private company, the Northwest Pacific Railroad Company who did what little track maintenance was done — after the NCRA Democrats (present and former associates of Bosco) raked off their vig for themselves.
Great coverage of this topic. Mark, you commented that the former NCRA claimed that their line was viable was to collect state track maintenance money flowing. Could that dynamic also be one reason that California Western Railroad insists that the skunk line is a viable line?
If they are getting government money to do the maintenance, then, yes, of course.
I say anything that can be done to stop the stupid idea of this Rail Trail is a good thing.