Local Motives : Town Saves a Railroad That Carries Its Lifeblood

WILLOW RANCH, Calif. — The train rumbled down the tracks of the Goose Lake 55, the railroad saved by a postmaster and a state lottery and named by a high school student, heading slowly south through sparsely populated Modoc County in the northeast corner of California.

Flocks of ducks and geese and a lone bald eagle soared overhead as the 14-car lumber train made its way along the placid eastern shore of Goose Lake. As red-bearded engineer Dave Lafferty, 36, sounded the whistle of the chop-nose orange-and-white diesel No. 1617, antelope grazing near the tracks looked up.

The train traveling the tracks of the Goose Lake 55, a 3-month-old short-line railroad owned by Lake County, Ore., was on one of its twice-a-week round trips between Lakeview, Ore., and Alturas, Calif.

It looked for a while as though there might not be any trains on this track after the Southern Pacific Transportation Co. announced plans 2 1/2 years ago to abandon the branch line, which had been in operation since 1912.

But then Lakeview Postmaster Orval R. Layton, who was worried about the effect on the local lumber industry, got into the act. Layton, 59, a Lake County railroad commissioner, organized a committee to save the railroad.

These days everyone calls him Choo-Choo.

It eventually took legislation in Oregon to launch the railroad with the unusual name on Jan. 18. The legislation authorized Lake County to own property outside of Oregon and promised that Lake County would abide by California laws and regulations as it operated its railroad in Modoc County.

Layton has suggested erecting “Entering Lake County, Oregon” signs along the single-track roadbed as it threads its way through 40 miles of California. The railroad has 15.5 miles of track in Oregon.

“Our little town would have been devastated if the railroad went out of business,” said Layton, who has worked for the Lakeview Post Office for 40 years, 28 of them as postmaster. “It was a matter of survival. We have four sawmills in Lakeview. Lumber is what keeps us going. The railroad is our lifeline. If the railroad goes, the sawmills go.”

There were 220 jobs at stake in Lakeview, population 2,800. The Lakeview Chamber of Commerce reported that closing of the mills would cause a $1.5-million loss in annual salaries, with a ripple effect producing a $5-million yearly loss to the community’s economy.

Southern Pacific offered to sell the track and 55.5 miles of the 20-to-160 foot-wide track bed for $1.7 million. “Too high,” Layton argued. After considerable negotiations, the two sides agreed on a price of $560,000.

Where to get the money was the next question.

Layton and others thought of Oregon’s year-old state lottery. Funds generated by the lottery are supposed to promote economic development.

In early January, the largest grant of lottery profits in Oregon to date--$475,150--was awarded to Lake County to purchase the line from Southern Pacific. The county had to raise the rest. When the four mills each contributed $21,212.50, for a total of $84,850, the money was there.

But there was still no train to roll down the tracks.

The county’s seven-member Railroad Commission, consisting of Layton, one representative from each sawmill, a representative from Lakeview and another from the county, called for bids from rail operators throughout the nation.

Great Western Railway Co. of Loveland, Colo., was awarded the contract to run the railroad.

“Not 1 cent of taxpayers’ money was used to purchase the railroad nor to operate it,” Layton said. “Great Western stands all the costs. It is responsible for maintenance and operation, for payment of taxes, the whole works.”

Southern Pacific, which still collects shipping fees from the lumber mills, turns over to Great Western $300 for each carload hauled from Lakeview to the Southern Pacific main line in Alturas. In addition, the mills pay a $152 surcharge directly to Great Western for each car.

Great Western, in turn, places $25 for each car into an emergency fund to cover disasters and unforeseen problems.

Borrowed Stock

The Goose Lake 55 has no rolling stock. Great Western has provided two engines. The lumber cars come from Southern Pacific.

When the negotiations to purchase the line were completed, the 400 students in Lake County’s two high schools were asked to compete in a name-the-railroad contest, with the winner getting $100.

Molly Peterson, 18, a senior at Lakeview High School, is probably the only high school student in the nation to name a railroad. She said she suggested Goose Lake 55 “because the train runs along Goose Lake, a lake that is in both states, and it is 55 miles from Lakeview to Alturas.”

Plans are to paint the name picked by Peterson on both engines sometime soon.

Bob Evans, 47, manager of the Fremont Sawmill, said that processed lumber and wood chips from the four mills are transported throughout the nation, the lumber used in construction, the wood chips used by pulp mills.

“Geographically this is a bad location for trucks. It’s difficult to get trucks to come to this remote place. Shipping by truck, for us, is much more expensive than by rail. We save $25 per 1,000 board feet of lumber by using the railroad,” Evans said.

The four mills ship more than 1,000 lumber cars from Lakeview each year.

In abandoning the Lakeview-to-Alturas line, Southern Pacific followed a pattern of major railroads throughout the country in closing short-line operations because of high labor and maintenance costs.

When Southern Pacific operated the train, at least six men worked on each run. In its petition to abandon the line, filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission, the company said it was losing $500,000 a year on the operation.

The Goose Lake 55 employs an engineer and a conductor and a track maintenance crew of four. That’s it.

Debt of Gratitude

A recent editorial in the Lake County Examiner noted: “Without Postmaster Orval Layton, Lake County would be without the services of a railroad. It is as simple as that. The people of Lake County owe Mr. Layton a debt of gratitude that can simply never be repaid.”

Choo-Choo Layton hasn’t received a penny for saving the railroad. But there is another form of compensation for the chairman of the Railroad Commission.

“It’s just so good to hear that railroad whistle blowing,” the postmaster mused over a cup of coffee as Lafferty rolled the engine out of the sawmill yards past the old Lakeview railroad depot and set out on another scenic run to Alturas on the Goose Lake 55.