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Ah yes, the first days of the Yreka Western passenger excursions.? YW and the City of Yreka jointly launched the excursions in 1986.? A book written about the road back in 1992 stated they added an open air flatcar to the excursion train in 1987, that must have been after your visit.? Diesels would power the excursions for one more year until the former McCloud River 2-8-2 #19 came back from Oregon and entered service in 1989.?

One note, you say in your notes for the photos "The YW runs between Yreka and the SP Siskiyou Line interchange at Montague, about 9 miles away. The railroad still operates for freight service, but I don't believe they are still running passenger excursions.. Correction welcomed."? Since you asked for them, yes, the road is technically still in business but it hasn't handled any freight or passengers since about 2008.? The road's principle freight shipper since the late 1970s had been Hi-Ridge Lumber, which was typically good for 1-3 lumber and around 6 chip loads a week.? They abruptly shut down in 1999, which almost put the road under.? They survived only because a new owner bought the company.? It should also be noted that the YW interchanged with the Central Oregon & Pacific since they took over the Siskiyou Line back in 1993, and around 1999 or 2000 CORP went after additional traffic from what had been YW's second shipper, Timber Products, which operated a plant on the YW right across the street from Hi-Ridge.? The Timber Products mill produced peeler cores and veneer for their plywood mills in Grants Pass and Medford, Oregon, and prior to 1999 all that moved by truck.? Rail shipments had been around 2-4 chip loads each week.? CORP went after that peeler core and veneer business, which pretty quickly amounted to over 2,500 loads per year and made the YW healthy again, for a while.? There was one bad break in the early 2000s when Tunnel 13 on the CORP line at the top of Siskiyou Summit burned that caused a two or so year disruption in service, then in 2008 the freight traffic ended probably for good when CORP decided to not run trains over the Siskiyous anymore and the TP traffic went back to trucks.? The freight business had been supporting the passengers for the last couple years, and once the freight ended the passenger trains did too.? The YW has slowly been withering away since, they did a trickle of car storage business a while back and have scrapped almost everything on the property except for the #21 in your pictures.? The last time anything moved over the railroad was about four years ago when they towed the steam locomotive to Montague and put it on a flatcar after the Age of Steam Roundhouse bought it at a Sheriff's sale.? And yes, CORP has restored service over the top of the Siskiyous but there are so many legal entanglements and issues surrounding the YW that the TP shipments have remained on the highways. ??

Jeff Moore

Elko, NV? ?

One other note I was going to add, I'm pretty sure the engine block partially under the tarp in one of your photos was from YW #1171, one of a pair of former Union Pacific Alco S-4 diesels YW bought in the later 1970s.? The #1171 had mechanical issues the road knew about before they bought it but then never got around to fixing, and then they very slowly scrapped the unit over the first part of the 1980s.? The engine block was about the only thing left by 1986/1987, and it too vanished a short time later.?

Jeff Moore

Elko, NV