(The following story by Lee Juillerat appeared on the Klamath Falls Herald and News website on May 24.)
LAKEVIEW, Ore. — Union Pacific Railroad staffing and engine shortages have derailed expansion plans for the Lake County Railroad and the Fremont Sawmill in Lakeview.
The sawmill had hoped to get 140 to 150 carloads of fire-damaged and other timber from Southern California.
But after about a dozen, the Union Pacific stopped providing service. The railroad had downsized and wasn’t prepared for an economic resurgence, leaving it short of trained crews, engines and box cars.
Those few shipments represented the first time the county-owned railroad had sent items by rail from Alturas to Lakeview, a distance of about 55 miles. The privately-owned timber had come 800-900 miles from Southern California.
Kerry Hart, Fremont’s sawmill manager, said the company spent about $20,000 in preliminary work, including studies to determine if the plan was economically feasible and prepping an unloading site at the mill.
Hart said Fremont, which is part of the Collins Companies, had planned to ship logs to its mills in Lakeview and Chester, Calif. Logs are being sent to Chester, but by the Burlington Northern-Southern Pacific Railroad.
UP officials told Hart that no additional service will be available until at least September.
“Unfortunately, there is a very good market. We were all excited because it was good for the county, good for the railroad, good for the Fremont Sawmill,” Hart said. “Lake County is an unfortunate recipient of the Union Pacific problems.”
The mill had planned to convert the logs to industrial use lumber, such as moldings and doors.
The Fremont mill, however, is remaining busy because it has purchased the first salvage lumber sale from the Winter fire. Fire-damaged trees from the 2002 fire are being harvested, and the first logs arrived in Lakeview last week.
“They are just now coming in, so we haven’t put any into the mill to see what we’ve got,” Hart said. “How bad and to what degree they have been damaged we don’t know.”
The company expects to harvest and process 6 million to 12 log scale million board feet, depending on the quality of the damaged trees.
The Fremont Sawmill has 80 hourly employees, and about 100 total employees, and operates two shifts daily in its Lakeview sawmill and one in the planer mill. The company has spent about $3.5 million in new capital equipment over the last four years.
The mill processes about 60 million board feet of lumber annually, with about 70 percent being pondersosa pine, 24 percent white fir and a smattering of lodgepole pine and cedar. Only about 15 to 20 percent is harvested from Fremont-Collins lands, with the rest from public and private sources.
Ray Simms, director of the county-owned railroad, said the railroad would have to significantly increase its operations if the logs had been sent by rail from Southern California to Lakeview. The railroad makes about two trips to Alturas a week.
“We were looking forward to, and still believe, the day will come when that kind of activity will happen,” Simms said. “The good news is the Lake County Railroad was able to handle what we did do.”
In 2003, the railroad sent about 1,050 loaded rail cars from Lakeview to Alturas, or about 90 carloads a month. The county took over the railroad in November 1997, and in early 1998 it was sending only four carloads a month. Along with the Fremont Sawmill, Cornerstone Industrial Minerals Corp., which produces perlite, uses the county railroad.
Perlite is used for various building construction and horticultural purposes, including potting soil and soil amendments.
The Lake County Railroad has track in two states and operates on an average annual budget of about $500,000, although the 2003 budget totaled $1.75 million because of track rehabilitation work. The railroad installed 25,000 new ties and 32 miles of track, hauled and spread 40,000 yards of ballast, and replaced a half-mile of lightweight rail with heavier rail. The railroad employs three to four employees.