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The Yreka Western is in receivership due to a major loss of business caused by the collapse of tunnel 13 on CORP. There are other problems involving the management. At the time of the tunnel collapse, 19 was in the midst of a mandatory overhaul and was in pieces. The re-assembly was postponed due to the problems with the railroad. I would question whether she will be rebuilt by May 2006.

To add to what Fitz reported...The #19 got sidelined when the new boiler regulations went into effect at the beginning of 2002. The company started work on re-building the locomotive, but before they got very far disasture struck. The YWRR's freight business today relies on a singe customer, a sizeable Timber Products facility located about halfway along the line between Yreka and Montegue. Timber Products never was a major shipper on the YW, usually good for 2-4 woodchip loads per week. They are not a true sawmill, but rather a producer of peeler cores and veneer, which they trucked north to other TP facilities in Grants Pass, OR, for manufacture into plywood. Around 2001 or 2002 Central Oregon & Pacific talked to Timber Products to find out what it would take to shift the veneer traffic to rail. TP demanded same-day service between the two facilities, and CORP found a way to get it done. The result was that freight traffic on the YW shot from a few hundred carloads per year to several thousand. YW depended on this freight business to both subsidize their passenger operations, fund their trackwork, and finance the work on the #19. All this changed in December 2003 when a fire of unknown origins (but suspected to be set by transients) burned Tunnel 13 in the Siskiyou Mountains, on the CORP between Montegue and Ashland. The veneer traffic immediately shifted back to trucks, depriving the YW of almost all of its freight business. The company immediately suspended all work on the #19. As the closure dragged on the company suspended passenger operations for 2004 and eventually laid off all employees, with only enough people left to run the train remaining on the payroll on an "as needed" basis. The company accumulated a debt of around $2 million by the time Tunnel 13 re-opened and the freight business came back. However, things got to be too much for the little road, and it filed for bankruptcy protection last winter.Fitz mentioned some problems with ownership. A group out of Colorado purchased road from Kyle. The ownership group contained some partners that were by all accounts a very shady bunch. Or so say a lot of people who had dealings with the railroad at the time. Eventually those partners either left the company or were forced out. Ownership fo the company fell to an individual and what I remember as a minority partner. Sometime late last year the principle owner just vanished. His family later received two envelopes filled with money postmared in Arizona and written in his handwriting, but whatever became of him or where he is today is still a mystery. The remaining partner tried to keep it going, but was left with no other options but bankruptcy protection. Several parties showed real interest in buying the company from the bankruptcy court, including the City of Yreka. However, within the past couple weeks the court awarded the railroad back to the original shady partners. They have made a bunch of announcements of their intentions to keep the railroad going and get the steam locomotive back in operation...but at the same time a lot of people who knew these people during their previous association with the YW are freely predicting that this is just a front that will soon pass, followed shortly by the closure and liquidation of the YW. It will be interesting to see how this story plays out.Jeff MooreElko, NV