A string of lawsuits along with a fatal accident at the Shoshoni shop led to the company filing for bankruptcy in late 2021, and it was permanently shut down in early 2022.
Wasatch Railroad Contractors and John Rimmasch were charged with fraud due to a mismanaged repair of a passenger coach owned by Steamtown National Historic Site, and were found guilty by a federal jury in April 2022.
[6] The company picked up various contracts for restoration jobs, as time progressed, including a former Jim Crow-era Southern Railway passenger coach, which was positioned on static display inside the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
[23][24] In 2021, Wasatch publicly opposed the planned Kansas City Southern Railroad and Canadian Pacific Railway merger in a filing with the Surface Transportation Board.
[25] The Big South Fork Scenic Railway hired Wasatch to perform boiler work on their former Union Railroad 0-6-0 locomotive, No.
The matter went to court, which ruled in late 2020 that Wasatch owed $730,284.60 in damages to the Big South Fork Scenic Railway due to the shoddy locomotive work.
[28] The Como Roundhouse project, operated by the South Park Rail Society, suffered similar mechanical faults on a locomotive Wasatch had repaired for them, former Klondike Mines Railway No.
[29] Instead of pursuing legal options against Wasatch, the society chose to crowdfund the needed money to repair the locomotive for a return service on their own.
[30] On April 21, 2021, a tanker car formerly used to carry hazardous materials exploded inside Wasatch's Shoshoni shop, killing two employees, 28-year-old Dallas Mitchell and 21-year-old Daniel Conway.
[37][38] The sentence was given on July 5; Rimmasch was required to serve thirty months in prison and three years of probation upon release, along with paying for fines and working for community service.