We’re big fans of the county’s Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum near our home in Nevada City. We’re donors, longtime California railroad buffs, as well as fans of director Madelyn Helling and the crew of talented, engineering-minded volunteers.
While meeting with Madelyn recently and walking the grounds, I wondered aloud whether it would be possible to bring back the Narrow Gauge rail line — a nostalgic thought more than anything else.
It would be very costly and difficult: Much of the track is gone and the “right of way” negotiations in a county with a “get off my land” mindset would be thorny.
Still, it’s OK to dream — and so are others.
“How many of you would support the idea of bringing back a rail line from Colfax to Grass Valley and Nevada City?” Reinette Senum wrote on her Facebook page this weekend. “We would utilize the old Narrow Gauge route and actually tunnel under the areas where there are new homes.
“This would be for passenger and freight. Please let me know. I’m working on this right now.”
Any discussion obviously is at its infancy and faces myriad hurdles. But I appreciate creativity and initiative in our community — as opposed to embracing the status quo.
(This photo, from 1930, shows Sadie Geronimi Angiolini — the last surviving employee of the county Narrow Gauge railroad — oiling up Engine #5. Photo courtesy of Searls Historical Library.)
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As it is now, if gas price triples (over time), or more specifically if the ratio of the price of a gallon of gas to the average hourly wage in the area goes up and stays there, then, we (GV and NC) are not going to survive as a going enterprise. We are very remote from distribution centers, and if the suppier transportation costs versus income go up enough, you can bet we will be dropped like a hot brick. That’s just the way ‘free’ enterprise works.
Rail is the best way, bar none, to reduce that vulnerability. End of story.
I asked a rail buff “how do you propose to address the mindset that a certain population level and a certain population density are needed to support a rail line?” The answer – short and sweet – the start of a complete reply, not the end of one – is “ask that to the people in Europe.” Population levels and densities are not necessarily as big of a hurdle as we might think.
I have lived in Europe, and the populations densities are indeed much greater which is one reason why rail is more successful there. Pop densities us higher in the cities where there is more likely to be multi-storied apartment. It is also higher in the countryside where people typically live in “villages” rather than on Penn Valley style ranchettes (I live on one of those too). Even in such villages, parcel sizes are smaller, and multi-family dwellings common.
There are also no wide open spaces like that in the US West (e.g. Highway 50 across Nevada), or even uninhabited forest areas like big parts of the area between here and Lake Tahoe.
The higher population density in the rural areas is due to decades (or centuries) of zoning regulation, high fuel taxes, and so forth. Bottom line is that there are just a lot more people per square mile in Europe, and such issues are handled differently. One result is a fantastic train system!
Thanks Tony, open dialog is what we need on this and the question is definitely open. I’m guessing we’ll hear a larger public call for interested folks soon but couldn’t swear to it. Many of the people interested in this topic might not be online that much.
> the “right of way” negotiations in a county with a “get off my land” mindset would be thorny.
Indeed. But it seems to me, the way to do this would be to harness people’s short-term focus:
a) get stimulus money
b) offer the property owners money for “easements-in-future” – say, that’d go into effect 20 yrs from now.
c) ergo, a property owner who’s hurting now can get some money and spend it (locally?) or use it to stave off foreclosure, and doesn’t experience any downside in exchange; and, 20 yrs from now, lo we have the easements again to put back the rail line.
We need jitneys for local journeys, and rail on the 49 and 174 corridors. Morph the current Gold Country Stage into something that more closely pays its way. It’s doable, we just have to use our imagination. Subsidizing old ways of thinking is hurting our local economy. Think different.