The Nevada Northern Railway Museum is in Ely, NV, one hundred and twenty miles south of West Wendover off the I-93, one hundred and eighty miles west of Holden off the I-15, or two hundred and twenty miles north of Garnet off the I-15. That's some distance, but it's worth the drive. The countryside is spectacular, Ely is really friendly and, if you engineer one of the steam locomotives at the museum, you're in for a treat!
The museum is founded around the southern end of the old Nevada Consolidated Copper Company line that used to run between East Ely and Cobre, NV, where it connected with the Southern Pacific. The railroad's main purpose was to haul copper ore, but it also handled freight and a passenger train ran daily until 1941.
Activity began to decline in the late 1970s and, in 1983, all operations were suspended. Three years later, the line, yard and shop facilities at East Ely were transferred to the White Pine Historical Railroad Foundation, a non-profit organisation that today operates the property as the Nevada Northern Railway Museum.
The Nevada Northern Railway Museum's offices, shop and ticket office are in old Mission Revival style East Ely depot. It was designed by Frederick Hale and completed in 1907. You can see another Mission Revival depot on the Kelso Depot page of this website.
The naming of the depot was a matter of contention between the railroad and residents of Ely, who successfully sued to have the name changed from Ely to East Ely to reflect its 1¼ mile distance from the main township.
The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Above, looking across the yard.
The Machine Shop, on the left in the views above, and the Engine House, on the right, house much of the museum's motive power collection.
The brick building was constructed in 1908, and altered in 1917 and 1941.
Above, inside the Machine Shop, #204 and all the machinery of an operational railroad.
#204 is one of one hundred and fifty 1,750 hp, six-axled SD9s ordered by the Southern Pacific.
Five hundred and fifteen SD9s were built by EMD between 1954 and 1959, four hundred and seventy-one for US railroads, the rest for export. It.
#204 was built in 1956 and delivered as #5468, but was renumbered #3942 in 1965. In 1977, it was rebuilt and renumbered again as #4426.
The unit was retired in July 1995 and sold to Progress Rail Service, a dealer in used locomotives. The following year it was purchased by the Nevada Northern Railway, and it now runs excursions and provides engineer rentals.
In the adjacent engine house, Rotary Snowplow B was built in 1907 by Alco for the Nevada Northern.
It is one of the last wood-bodied standard gauge rotary plows still in existence.
The snowplow is permanently coupled to a tender to provide fuel and water to power the internal steam engine.
The tender in use is from Nevada Northern ten-wheeler (4-6-0) #21. Built by Alco in 1909 for freight service, #21 was scrapped in 1952, but its tender was retained for use by the plow.
The steam engine powered the rotary blades at the front of the plow, but it had no motive power of its own.
Instead, it was pushed from behind by one or more locomotives.
The snowplow has not been operated for many years but could be restored to operating condition with a boiler inspection and minor repairs.
You can see the oldest surviving steam powered rotary snowplow in the US, Northern Pacific #2, on the Lake Superior Railroad Museum page of this website.
#105 is one of nine RS-2s built by Alco for the Kennecott Copper Corporation, successor to the Nevada Consolidated Copper Company, between 1948 and 1949. It was part of the last delivery of four RS-2s to the company in late 1949. It is one of three hundred and fifty-three RS-2s built with a single 12 cylinder, 1,500 hp model 244 engine. An additional thirty-one RS-2s were built by Alco in early 1950 with 1,600 hp engines.
A total of three hundred and eighty-four of these switchers were produced from 1946 to 1950, including nine by Alco's partner company, the Montreal Locomotive Works in Canada. Thirteen were exported overseas, the remainder went to US railroads.
Above, the tender of NN #81 alongside
RS-2 #105 and the tender of NN #21, which is coupled to Rotary Snowplow B.
#81 is a Consolidation type (2-8-0) built for the Nevada Northern in 1917 by Baldwin at a cost of $23,700. It weighs 155,500 lbs, has 21" x 26" cylinders and 51" drivers. Operating at a boiler pressure of 190 psi, it delivered 36,200 lbs tractive effort.
During its service life, #81 hauled both freight and passenger trains. It was donated to the White Pine Museum in 1960. When I visited, it was awaiting reflueing and other routine maintenance.
Visible on the left of the upper photo of NN #81 is a potbelly stove with the stamp "D&RGRW 1882" on its door. Below, another view of the stove.
As Mark Bassett asked (see "At the Throttle", November 2005), how did the Nevada Northern come to have this and one other potbelly stove, also dated 1882, from the Denver & Rio Grande Western?
The closest the D&RGW came to the Nevada Northern was a terminus at Salt Lake City, UT, one hundred and sixty miles from Cobre and two hundred and forty miles from Ely. Surely, there were potbellies for the Nevada Northern to buy closer to hand!
Steam operated, 100 ton Wrecking Crane A was bought from the Industrial Works of Bay City, MI, by the Nevada Northern in 1907 at a cost of $16,015.
The crane sits on a heavy-duty flat car pivoting on a set of heavy rollers, and a boom can be extended to provide additional lifting torque. It lifted rolling stock and locomotives back onto the track after derailments, as well as other heavy objects like bridge beams. Used to build the nearby McGill Smelter in 1908, it was in service as recently as 1982 clearing a wreck on the Western Pacific.
The museum started restoration of Crane A in 2002 using a $10,000 grant from Trains magazine but, because of other pressing commitments, it was not until late 2005 that the work was completed. It is now one of only three operational steam powered wrecking cranes in existence in the US.
You can see other Industrial Brownhoist cranes on the B&O Museum Yard & Car Shop page of this website, the Spencer S. and Hope Fox Eccles Railroad Center page and the Gold Coast Railroad Museum page.
#81 is an 85 ton overhead catenary powered electric locomotive built by General Electric in 1941. It was originally numbered #58 and worked on Kennecott Copper's Chino Mines Division in New Mexico.
In 1963, it was moved to the Nevada Mines Division at McGill, NV, where there was about a mile of electrified track. There, it was renumbered #81 and was used to spot cars in the McGill yard and at the rotary dumper. KCCX #81 was never used on the Nevada Northern Railway.
Kennecott Copper was formed in 1898 as the Boston Consolidated Mining Company to mine copper in Bingham Canyon, fifteen miles south west of Salt Lake City, UT. Over the following decades, the company grew by acquisition, merger and exploration. It first used the name Kennecott in 1936, by which time it was one of the largest producers of copper in the world. It still operates today as Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation, a division of the Rio Tinto Group
On the other side of KCCX #81 is KCCX #301, a 25 ton, 150 hp
B50/50-1 diesel-electric built in 1950 for Kennecott Copper's Nevada Mines Division by General Electric. It is typical of GE's early, single-ended locomotives built for industrial use. It has a Cummins HI-600 prime mover, and operated at McGill as a switcher, but never served on the Nevada Northern Railway.
Just behind KCCX #81 is the entrance to the old engine house wash room (in the right hand view). The round, earthenware wash basins are typical of many such wash rooms across railroad facilities in the US (see, for example, the Spencer Shops on the North Carolina Transportation Museum page of this website). These ones appear to be continuous-flow dispensers. The wash room is no longer in use and is a general storage area.
#109 was built by Alco in 1950 for Kennecott Copper Company's Ray Mines Division. In 1970, it moved to the Nevada Mines Division after new EMD GP39s came onto the Ray Division. In 1987, it was sold to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
The RS-3 is effectively an updated Alco RS-2, delivering 1,600 hp instead of the RS-2's 1,500 hp. Still operational, #109 has a four cycle Model 244 V12 prime mover powering four GE 752 traction motors. Weighing 229,000 lbs and 55' 11" long, it delivers 52,500 lbs continuous tractive effort at 10 mph and has a top speed of 65 mph.
The RS-3 was designed to compete with equivalent offerings from EMD, Fairbanks-Morse and Baldwin, and one thousand, one hundred and forty-eight were built between 1950 and 1956, one thousand, two hundred and sixty-five for US railroads, ninety-eight for Canadian, forty-eight for Brazilian and seven for Mexican. You can see WM RS-3 #195 on the Baltimore & Ohio Museum Yard & Car Shop page of this website and RDG RS-3 #467 on the Steamtown Yard page.
You can also see NW RS-3 #300 on the Virginia Museum of Transportation page.
#40 is a ten wheeler type (4-6-0) coal-burning locomotive built by Baldwin in 1910 for passenger service on the Nevada Northern. It cost $13,139, has 69" drivers and 19" x 26" cylinders, and operates at a boiler pressure of 175 psi. It weighs 137,400 lbs and has a tractive effort of 23,100 lbs. In about 1915, it was converted from slide to piston valves and received a superheater.
#40 operated mainly between Cobre and Ely until passenger services were scrapped in 1941. It was then tried on freight trains, but its large drivers did not provide enough tractive effort to make it viable. So, it was retired, except for occasional use on passenger excursions, and was donated to the museum in 1986 along with rest of the railroad equipment at Ely. Beginning in 2002, it underwent an inspection and overhaul that completed in early 2005. It then returned to service, and provides both passenger excursions and engineer rentals.
I visited the museum in October 2009 to participate in its Engineer Rental programme and took the throttle of this Consolidation (2-8-0) type locomotive.
The Northern Nevada #93 page on this website gives more information on the locomotive and has photographs of my return Ely-Keystone trip.
#93 is one of four Consolidations built by Alco in 1909 at a cost of $17,610 each to haul ore trains on the Nevada Northern. It weighs 187,000 lbs, and has 51" drivers and 21" x 30" cylinders. Operating at 190 psi boiler pressure, it delivers 41,890 lbs tractive effort.
#93 was sold to Nevada Consolidated Copper in September 1920 when that company took over operation of the ore line. In 1952, three of the original four locomotives supplied by Alco in 1909 were scrapped, but #93 was retained as back up motive power. In 1961, with no further use for the locomotive, Kennecott Copper donated it to the White Pine Public Museum in Ely, NV, where it went on open air display.
In 1990, #93 was traded by the Nevada Northern Railway from the White Pine Historical Railroad Foundation, along with all of the museum's railroad equipment, in exchange for the Cherry Creek Depot, which became the foundation's new museum building.
#93 was then towed to the Nevada Northern Railway engine house where work got underway to return the locomotive to operating condition. Three years later, in 1993, #93 began its new career hauling excursion trains.
On the left above, three shots of USA MRS-1 #B-2081. On the right USA MRS-1 #B-2080.
These two diesel-electrics were built by Alco in 1953, two of eighty-three MRS-1s produced for the US Army Transportation Corps between 1953 and 1954. They were designed for use in theatres of war, with multi-gauge trucks and a narrow loading gauge for service on a wide range of railway systems. MRS stood for Military Road Switcher.
Soon after delivery, most of the units went into storage at the USATC's Transportation Materiel Command facility in Marietta, PA. They remained there until about 1970, when the Pentagon decided plans for a future large-scale land war no longer included capture and use of enemy railway systems. Many were then assigned to military installations around the country until the Army transferred the units to the US Navy. Subsequently, thirteen were sold to the Alaska Railroad, and two to the Administración de Ferrocarriles del Estado in Uruguay.
The MRS-1 weighs 240,000 lbs and is 55' 11" in length. It has a four cycle Model 244D prime mover powering four GE 752 traction motors, one on each of two axles on the six wheel trucks. With a top speed of 70 mph, it delivers 30,700 lb continuous tractive effort at 11 mph.
#4303 was built by EMD in 1954 as Southern Pacific #5354. It was renumbered #3814 in 1965 and then, after a rebuild in 1970, #4303. It was retired in 1994, sold to Progress Rail Service, a dealer in used locomotives in 1995, and then to BHP Nevada Railroad, where it became #201.
Four hundred and seventy-one SD9s were built for US railroads between 1954 and 1959, and forty-four for export. One hundred and fifty were delivered to the Southern Pacific, including fifty-two with steam generators for passenger service. A number of SD9s have survived.
#4303 is not operational and is now used for spare parts.
Eight wheel Kennecott Copper diesel-electric crane #7 has an 80 ton lifting capacity.
No builder's plate has been found on the crane and, although the construction date is therefore not known, it is probably a relatively modern piece of equipment.
This spreader was built in 1917 by the O. F. Jordan Company of Chicago for the Nevada Northern, although it has been modified over the years. The corrugated metal sheeting on the sides, for example, is an addition to the original wooden cab and housing.
Spreaders remove snow, spread gravel, build banks and trim embankments of brush along the sides of track. They are pushed by a locomotive, which also supplies power, but operated by a separate crew. The front plow and side wings push snow well clear of tracks.
#360 is one of the oldest maintenance-of-way machines in existence.
This is one of five four wheel maintenance of way cars in the museum's collection. #5000 was built in 1913 at the Nevada Northern shops from a steam locomotive pilot truck. The wheels are 44" in diameter, and the ballast weight is lead.
Scale cars are used to calibrate the scales that weigh loaded railroad cars. They are of a precisely known weight so that the scale can be calibrated against them. This is important as customers are generally billed against the weight of cargo being shipped.
Cars are also weighed to ensure they are within axle load limits.
Above, three views across the yard.
The Car Repair Shop, or RIP Building, above was built between 1944 and 1945, and houses three tracks. Access to the single track, western entrance is through a single door. Access to the two track, eastern entrance is through roll-up metal doors.
Before it was built, car repairs were carried out in the open on tracks in the yard. It must have been challenging work in winter!
The building appeared to be in the process of being converted into exhibition space when I visited, but was not accessible.
The eastern end of Ely Yard is dominated by the 75' tall combined concrete coal tower and sand house, built in 1917.
The tower houses elevator machinery to lift the coal and sand into bins (the sand house is part of the tower, with a bin to hold fine sand). A slightly elevated spur track runs along the north side of the tower where hoppers dumped coal through a grate into a lower bin, from which a bucket lift carried it up to the coal bins. Sand was dumped in the same way to be loaded in the sand bin.
A track (no longer present) ran directly under the tower, from which coal was loaded into locomotive tenders through chutes, and where sand was fed into sand domes through a pipe and hose.
The 75' tall water tower rests on a concrete base that carries a date of 8-22-10, although the 100,000 gallon cylindrical steel tank of riveted steel capped by a conical steel roof is of more recent date. The tank is mounted on four steel girders with tension rod sway braces. The square wooden housing surrounding the standpipe is to insulate it during freezing weather.
On the left, carriages and an open car await passengers for one of the museum's excursions.
Dieselisation during the second half of the 20th Century led to the demolition of railroad yards, shops and steam locomotive servicing facilities across the US. Because of its remoteness and the gradual decline of the mining industry, however, the East Ely yard escaped major modernisation.
It is now one of the best preserved and most complete historic main yard complexes in the US, with thirty-nine historic buildings and seventy-five historic structures including rolling stock.
The rail yards were listed as a National Historic Landmark in September 2006.
Related Links:
Nevada Northern Railway Museum Location
Nevada Northern Railway Museum Website
Nevada Northern National Historic Landmark Nomination
Nevada Northern & Railroads of White Pine County
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