Safety Risks Shut Down Freight Line

The historic Northwestern Pacific Railroad, once vital to the lumber industry, has been shut down because of safety risks and the line’s threat to the environment.

The emergency order, which took effect at 6 p.m. Friday, halts the freight line from Humboldt to Napa counties.

Northwestern Pacific officials said they were stunned by the order.

“This is bad news,” said Bob Jehn, a member of the North Coast Railroad Authority, the public body that oversees the railroad. “These trains need to continue running.”

Storm damage has made the track hazardous with the threat of death or injury to the public or railway employees, the federal agency said Wednesday. Thirty-two of the railroad’s 127 highway crossing signals were broken, it said.

The deterioration of the tracks also threatened the Eel and Russian rivers, the administration said. The 286-mile line passes through the pristine upper Eel River canyon in Humboldt County and runs along the Russian River above Healdsburg in Sonoma County.

Millions in emergency federal funds to fix the tracks have been held up for more than a year because of questions over the railroad’s accounting practices.

For years, the railroad ran an extensive ferry service on San Francisco Bay and a commuter train service in Marin County. But as a subsidiary of Southern Pacific, it later cut back to freight-only operations.

Southern Pacific sold the railroad to a short-line operator, which in 1991 was taken over by a consortium of government agencies, including Humboldt and Mendocino counties and the Golden Gate Bridge District.

The line in Sonoma and Marin had been proposed for passenger transit, but voters rejected transit sales tax measures in November.

Meanwhile, a private firm with a history of financial problems, Rail-Ways Inc. of Elgin, Ill., ran the freight operations, neglecting maintenance. The railroad still has $7 million in unpaid bills.

Rail-Ways Inc. has been hauling about 300 cars a month on the railroad from Willits to Napa, mostly carrying gravel and timber.

Federal regulators said the order would remain in effect until the crossing signals are repaired, vegetation is cleared from the tracks and maintenance crews are properly trained.