All Aboard!! Skunk Train maneuvers: land transfers, a proposed city truce, a federal ruling on deck — plus the latest spin from the railroad’s own press release

Lots of railroad news has rolled into the station! The City floats a courtroom truce, a federal agency prepares to rule, and the railroad shifts properties. That’s the news we found. What does it all mean? Read on!

Like one of those freight trains with one engine pushing and another pulling — the kind we all love to watch crossing the Great Plains with a hundred cars in tow — the Skunk saga has been full of push and pull, and it’s been hard to tell which direction it’s really headed. 

At first, the railroad was being dragged backward by the California Coastal Commission and the City of Fort Bragg, losing case after case and struggling to gain traction.

Then the backwards engine seemed to take charge, and suddenly the whole train was lurching the other way. We hope this all gets resolved, because Fort Bragg needs a real railroad for its future — even if, for now, it’s mostly a passenger line between Fort Bragg and Willits. At this point, we want just one question answered: When will work on the tunnel start? We need a date. We need the City to get on board with fixing the tunnel, and we need the railroad to make real plans to do it — not just talk about it.

The courts also reversed the win by John Meyer, the man in Willits whose 20 acre property the railroad tried to take, ending up in litigation about whether they were really a railroad or just a fun ride and whether they were a utility or not. The appeals court reversed the local court and said even if the railroad stopped functioning as a public utility, it retained its legal status as such. There is an effort to appeal this. We’ll be checking on that for another story; we haven’t been able to reach him yet. All of this will still be a black eye for the railroad if it doesnt get to work on the tunnel.

Willits eminent domain reversal in favor of the railroad

So here’s what’s actually happening right now.

1. At Monday’s City Council meeting, Fort Bragg Mayor Jason Godeke said the City is seeking a 90‑day pause in its litigation with Mendocino Railway — better known as the Skunk — to give both sides room to reassess. 

“We are going to be requesting a 90 day stay with the judge in our litigation, and that should happen by the end of this week all parties involved, so that will be to support settlement negotiations between all parties, the California Coastal Commission, Mendocino Railway, and the City of Fort Bragg, so again, the 90 day stay will be requested,” Mayor Godeke announced at Monday’s Council meeting.

We got the following response from Robert Pinoli, president and CEO of Mendocino Railway:

“It is my understanding that the City of Fort Bragg (City) and California Coastal Commission (CCC) had a conversation and agreed to approach the court asking for a 90-day stay to work on getting a resolution over the finish line. I am happy to hear that the City and CCC seem to be aligned on a resolution. Recall, we didn’t start this fight; we have continuously followed the law on all matters. We are also committed to seeing a resolution that acknowledges what went wrong and how two entities can move forward for the common good of creating something far more meaningful than a pile of legal bills.”

2. Property transfers inside the Sierra Railroad family of companies, for no money. Many properties were transferred by quitclaim deed between sister companies inside the Sierra Railway family. Sierra Northern Railway transferred any and all property it had to Sierra Railroad Holdings. Quitclaim deeds don’t mean one had title, only that they might have and the title needs to be clean for some purpose, taxes, transfers, loans, all kinds of stuff. We found this searching files.

We sent Pinoli one of the documents we found as we looked through county files. He said the transfers are no big shakes:

“Some property clean up issues, nothing worth writing an article on,” Pinoli said.

We’ll continue bringing you what we uncover about local businesses as we go.

3. The head of the Surface Transportation Board has announced that he will be issuing his final take on the Skunk issue. The STB has already recognized Mendocino Railway as part of the Sierra Railway system — a real railroad, not a tourist ride, as the City and others had alleged. We broke that story at the time.

Surface Transportation Board to issue ruling on Skunk Train line in February

Our story explained something essential: how the political makeup has shifted to become more pro‑business.

Our story on the surface transportation board

Pinoli’s response to the ruling:

“The Surface Transportation Board plans a final ruling, which sounds interesting STB Chairman Fuchs has publicly said that the longstanding back log of cases at the STB need to get resolved. We’re optimistic as to the outcome. February only has 18 days left (including weekends and a holiday) so getting this matter resolved will be good” Pinoli responded.

4. When will the tunnel work start?  That is the big question everybody has. Pinoli’s response follows:

“As I’ve conveyed many times the tunnel has been made complicated because of these legal issues and the spiraling costs of construction. When we set out to do this back in 2020 costs were X, then the City filed its nonsensical litigation against the railroad, inviting the CCC in in hopes of exerting some kind of leverage thinking we’d cave to wrong vs right. These legal delays have caused not only construction delays but also serious financial repercussions too. I have also said countless times that if the litigation hadn’t started we would have trains passing through that very tunnel today. Our commitment remains steadfast in getting service through Tunnel #1. I am also hopeful that as we continue to make progress with the City, they recognize the value the railroad has and support our efforts to re-connect the communities of Willits and Fort Bragg by steel rails.”

5. We’ve said clearly that we support restoring rail service between Willits and Cloverdale. Pinoli noted that this particular case doesn’t address that question, but the point remains relevant.

“I, too, would like to see rail between Willits and Cloverdale. Many don’t realize that the American freight rail system is the most efficient way to transport freight globally. Communities that are rail served are far better economically. We absolutely need rail in interior Mendocino County. It’s not as if the rail doesn’t exist, we live in such a disposable society, let’s start using what we have and oh by the way, it’s also far more efficient and environmentally friendly than putting trucks on the road. A vocal minority want to see the numbers (as in show me there is business), anyone who knows the logistics of transportation knows that it’s a build it and they will come approach not the other way around.”

The core problem remains the rulings that block the Skunk from restoring the Willits–Cloverdale rail corridor in favor of the Great Redwood Trail — a plan many local leaders have supported despite its impact on Mendocino County. Sonoma County secured a fully functioning railroad far beyond what anyone predicted. Mendocino County, by contrast, was left with almost nothing from the same process. There must be a track between Willits and Cloverdale. The Skunk supports it; our local government does not; many environmental groups oppose it; and the result has been a lopsided outcome for Mendocino County and for the Round Valley Reservation.

A functioning rail line could unlock innovation in public transit, food systems, partnerships with landowners, and collaboration with the Round Valley Tribe — benefits that would ripple across the region for decades. Yet at this moment, Sierra Railway is the only entity actively pursuing that vision. We hope federal regulators will take a close look at the importance of reopening this route.

By the way, there is, sadly, no realistic way to extend the rail route back to Humboldt along the Great Redwood Trail. In 2023, my nephew, Joel Hartzell, became the first person to through‑hike the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad — the future Great Redwood Trail — from the San Francisco Bay to Manila in Humboldt, and the Eel River Canyon is simply not passable. Our historical research shows that even the original railroad engineers understood this early on; they realized they had picked a fight with Mother Nature they could never win, with or without today’s environmental or safety regulations.

Skirting the canyon is a must — not just for trains, but for the walking trail as well. The Great Redwood Trail simply cannot follow the old route much past Alder Point. The landowners along that stretch never agreed to anything except a railroad. Give them that, and they could build hostels, generate electric power, and use the line to move farm products to market. A functioning rail corridor would let the region innovate instead of forcing a trail through terrain that cannot safely support it.

Let’s find a new route past Willits and take it all the way to Eureka — a corridor that could make California rail strong for the future, and one future generations might thank us for if we can pull it off. An inland alignment could also serve a second purpose: bypassing the hopeless stretch of Highway 1 north of Ten Mile Bridge. A combined corridor — rail, roadway, and trail — could finally give the North Coast the resilient, modern infrastructure it has never had.

We also received the following press release about the local railroad from Visit California. It’s an enthusiastic release — very much in the style of promotional material — and it’s worth keeping that in mind as you read it. Press releases, whether from government or tourism agencies, are written to present a particular narrative, and they’re rarely scrutinized before being republished elsewhere.

In the end, this isn’t just a fight over a railroad or a trail. It’s a fight over whether the North Coast gets a future shaped by reality or by wishful thinking. The papers we found, the rulings handed down, the canyon Joel walked, the history the old crews left behind — they all point to the same truth: Mendocino County deserves infrastructure that works, not fantasies that sound great on paper but in practice dont work for the tribes, the landowners and the future.

A rail line from Willits to Cloverdale isn’t nostalgia. It’s the backbone of a region that has been asked, again and again, to settle for less. And a new inland route toward Eureka isn’t impossible — it’s the kind of long‑view thinking California will wish it had embraced when the next generation asks why the North Coast was left stranded.

So read the press releases, enjoy the glossy promises, but remember the ground truth beneath them. The canyon doesn’t lie. The history doesn’t lie. And neither does the future we could build if we choose the path that actually hold.

The photos below are from a Skunk Trip we took in about 2005.