Crossing the mud flats, a 56 car train approaches Brazos heading for interchange with the Cal Northern at Lombard. The covered hoppers are empties returning from the industries near Petaluma, and the tank cars are moving out of storage at Schellville. The late afternoon lighting during winter and spring when the hills are green is magical, almost unreal. So far very little has changed since SMART took over management of the railroad on March 1. The trains are actually run by a contractor, Summit Signal Inc. of Willits, and the guys doing the work are so far the same friendly guys as before. SMART apparently has the right to the NWP name, but it is unclear what they will want to call their freight operation, hopefully it will continue to be NWP. Back in the old days SP hauled 100 car trains of lumber cars to and from the NWP interchange at Schellville via this route, this is probably about as close to one of those long trains as todays SMART/NWP is going to get. The signals are not block signals, they are approach signals to the lift bridge at Brazos.
