My friend Reg from Shelton tells me that the ballast cars and bulkhead
flats vanished from Knight's yard a few days ago. He thinks they went
out to the drysort yard for scrapping. The last interchange cars stored
at Knight's were taken to the mill this morning. Puget Sound & Pacific
will deliver ten empty cars to the waterfront mill today. They will be
the last loads out. Reg caught a work train near Dayton picking up scrap
rail. It consisted of the #1202, a flat and the American crane. A
crewman told him that Friday was the last day for the railroad employees.
Sierra Pacific takes over July 1st. They bought the four locomotives and all the rollingstock. Bids are being accepted for the equipment at this time.

And so we enter the beggining of the end...

More context, please.

Simpson's logging railroad has run west out of Shelton, WA for over 125 years. It was shut down about 2 years ago except for mill switching in Shelton. The two mills and all the railroad equipment was sold to Sierra Pacific Industries effective July 1st. All the equipment is to be sold. Simpson retained ownership of the railroad but with no traffic and no equipment it probably won't last long.

I haven't been by there in some time, but have some fine memories of the two visits in 1967 & 1976 which resulted in rides with Pete Replinger & later, Dave Skagen.

The 1976 trip was especially memorable as I joined the brakie in walking ahead of the engine & pouring sand on the rail from a coffee can. This was on the pull right off of the Vance Creek Bridge. It was pretty wet that day.

Skagen had me over to his home after he went off duty and fired up his live steam 3T Heisler and let me run it on his backyard r.r. Pete & I stilll stay in touch. Good times.