About ten times a day, giant freight trains pass through a narrow track on the Sacramento River in northern Northern California, where engineers on locomotives will often be nervous.
“Every time, it’s a near missed miss,” said Ryan Snow, president of the fraternity of the California Fraternity Locomotive Engineer and Trainer Fraternity. “Multiple mistakes, every run. My nightmare is a family that doesn’t pay attention to get hit.”
This special track heads north from the town of Dunsmuir and is a traitor’s route for hikers to Mossbrae Falls, one of Northern California’s most fascinating natural attractions. Feeding from the glaciers on Mount Shasta, water pours down from lava tubes and moss cliffs, forming a verdant and ethereal cascade into a calm, shadowy swimming hole.
It looks amazing. This is Not accessible either – Unless visitors invade more than a mile on the track, or wade on the river. The accident happened. Over the past few years, two people have been hit by trains (although both survived. But tourists keep coming. Painted by Instagram and Tiktok, more and more people have visited the waterfalls – according to an urban study, most people are 30,000 people who invade train tracks.
Outdoor enthusiasts in Dunsmuir and its surrounding areas have been pushing the track-owned Union Pacific Railroad to work with the city to create safe, accessible, easy to access, legal roads. But efforts have been plagued by delays.
This week, the train union decided to enter the competition, issued a press release denouncing slow progress and called on United Pacific to do more to make its long-standing cross-country dream a reality.
“There is no real building schedule every month, and life is at risk,” Snow said in a statement. The statement also accused the Alliance Pacific of “slow walking” the project, saying railway officials called for meetings after meetings, but never generated a commitment to the right of way or a clear construction schedule.
Snow said many engineers were frustrated and felt the delay “unfairly endangering railway personnel and the public.”
United Pacific said in a statement that the railway “approved the concept of the trail entering Mossbrae Falls a few years ago and we have been working with the city of Dunsmuir and the Shasta Mount Trail Association to find solutions to safety issues for all.”
Earlier this summer, Dunsmuir city officials held a “summit” with United Pacific officials to visit the waterfalls and talk about the proposed trail link.
The summit, which included representatives from the office of elected officials in the local area, and rail officials from Omaha and Denver, marked “a new milestone in a slow and steady process.” City officials said. A city press release noted that “important coalition Pacific officials have the opportunity to see the waterfall for the first time, recognizing the importance of public access to this beautiful natural resource.”
But some long-time advocates say they don’t believe that dreams are closer. John Harch, a retired surgeon Shasta Mountain Mountain Assn. He has been working with others for many years and he says he still hasn’t seen evidence of specific progress.
“Here we sit as we used to, and people risk their lives to see the waterfalls,” he wrote in an email.
Snow said he hopes the public can put pressure on all parties to make concrete progress.
“We are lucky that we didn’t cause any deaths due to the intruder strike,” he said. “The worst thing an engineer can do is hit someone. It’s a lot of stress.”
At the same time, he said, the route is just becoming more and more popular. “It’s in hiking magazines, and the internet is everywhere. It’s attracting more and more people.”
He added: “I can’t blame them. It’s beautiful.”
