The Winter Wonderland
While the first phase of rail will be a short trolley connecting Grass Valley with Nevada City, route studies are underway which will eventually connect the Lake Tahoe region with Major Metropolitan areas nearby without the need to beg, borrow or lease railway from Union Pacific. These alternate rail routes will make it possible for people to have vacation destinations in the Sierra, including resorts like Squaw Valley. The International Olympics Committe has already made it clear that the Lake Tahoe - Reno area could be considered for future Winter Olympics if, and only if rail connectivity is developed. Yet, myopic transportation planning agencies continue to ignore the benefits that rail development will have on their respective areas. The environmental damage that is widely known regarding the Lake Tahoe basin would be greatly mitigated by a rail system connecting the region to other areas with greater capacity for processing waste and sewage via rail tank cars [Cahill & Goldman of UC Davis] | 
One of the more spectacular structures for the Northern Sierra Railway will be a new bridge over the Bear River. The Bear river is the Natural boundary between Nevada County and Placer County. The proposed survey location for the new bridge will be downriver from the existing rammed earth dam that forms Rollins Lake. The historical trestle bridge (not shown due to copyright restrictions) that was part of the original NCNG (Nevada County Narrow Gage Railroad) was removed long ago, legend tells us, to provide steel for Gillette razors. An entirely new modern structure incorporating such features as a solar panel grid to help power the new electrified railway will be designed into a modern architectural wonder that will resemble the above photo only in as much as it will be a structure to support a train and span the river with zero hydrological impact. The train however, will be a state of the art ecologically friendly form of mobility that could operate entirely on locally produced petroleum free sustainable and renewable energy. The construction, maintenance and operation of the line will also contribute to the economic prosperity of the region for many generations to come.
Many people throw up their hands and decry that fools rush in on California railway development with no thought about the seismic concerns in California. What these same people have failed to notice is that in the recent massive earthquakes in Japan, a region also riddled with eartquake fault lines, not one single train was derailed directly from the 9.0 Richter quakes. The media was quick to illustrate the trains wrecked by the ensuing tsunamis with full color video footage into our homes. However, the fact that Japan's High Speed Rail system has emergency shutdown systems automatically triggered whenever a rail is displaced by a precisely measured minute amount has not been publicized. California could use the same technology for Rail Development in seismically active regions. The rail motion sensors cause electrical power to be shut off entirely in sections where the displacement is measured, bringing the trains to a halt via dynamic braking. Mechanical brakes are also applied if the vehicle exceeds a specified speed. That does not however prevent tsunamis.
