On a cold, drizzly morning last October, a school teacher and a small group of parents and kids waited beside the train tracks in Mapleton, an unincorporated community of about 500 people just east of Florence.
They listened for the distant sound of steel wheels clattering down the old tracks.
The tracks belong to the Port of Coos Bay and have historically been the primary rail line connecting the central Oregon Coast to the city of Eugene and the Willamette Valley. But on this day, the train cars coming down the line were not hauling lumber or heavy freight, but teddy bears and toys…