Origin
On September 8, 1981, Bryan Whipple purchased the soon-to-be abandoned northern end of the Northwestern Pacific mainline fromNorth Coast Daylight
The line operated an excursion train, the "North Coast Daylight", as a joint venture with Sierra Western Corp., the owners of historic passenger cars. Several of the cars had originally been Southern Pacific Daylight cars; others were a hodge-podge of vintage passenger, diner, and dome cars of the same era, painted in the iconic "Daylight" orange-striped scheme. The trains were pulled by Eureka Southern locomotives. On Saturday mornings, the "North Coast Daylight" passengers rode excursion buses from the San Francisco Bay area to Willits, where they boarded the train. The train followed the scenic Eel River Valley north to Eureka (a route never served by the original Southern Pacific Daylight trains). Passengers stayed overnight in Eureka, then boarded again on Sunday mornings for the return trip to Willits and (by bus) to the Bay Area. The cars were unheated, air conditioning often failed, and meals often were late. The vintage rail car toilets emptied their contents onto the tracks below, and passengers were asked not to flush while the train was stopped in the stations at Willits and Eureka. The North Coast Daylight was never financially stable, and operation was interrupted several times by reorganizations and damaged tracks. The service lasted, off and on, from about 1985 through 1990. The vintage cars were "marooned" in several rail yards when all rail service south was abandoned. Several have been scrapped, though at least one has been "rescued." In September 1988 the ES purchased the 7-mile (11 km) shortlineClosure
In 1991, the line was shut down due to an earthquake and related landslide that caused expensive washouts. The railroad was then sold at court order to the North Coast Railroad Authority in 1992, as a protection by local government agencies to ensure continued railroad service to the counties. The line was renamed the North Coast Railroad, and consisted of many former employees of the Eureka Southern. The North Coast Railroad continued to run "North Coast Daylight" trains into the mid-1990s, using the same passenger cars. The EUKA GP38 locomotives were not included in the sale, so the NCRA used a mixture of leased Southern Pacific GP9s and SD9s, as well as a purchased former Central California Traction Railroad GP9, #70. Most of the locomotives ended up marooned on the line in Eureka, and were scrapped in the fall of 2015 after sitting idle for nearly 20 years, including #70. Faced with constant washouts, derailments, unreliable schedules and a dwindling customer base, operations shut down in 1995 and have not reopened. The Eel River canyon segment of trackage, faced with two decades of no repair, is in some places nonexistent. Experts who surveyed the trackage in the late 2000s estimated a $20 million price tag to bring the line up to FRA minimal operating standards. The NCRA denied plans to abandon the line, but has not mentioned any plans to resume operations from Willits north. Many freight cars still dot the line, including four boxcars still in the river from a 1987 derailment and a string of flatcars trapped at Island Mountain. As of March 2022, the northern end of the line has officially been abandoned. The southern end of the NWP is now a commuter rail line, and the line will be converted into Great Redwood hiking and biking trail.References
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