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The Nevada Northern Railway Museum is in Ely, NV, 120 miles south of West Wendover off the I93, 180 miles west of Holden off the I15, or 220 miles north of Garnet off the I15. Although that’s some distance, it’s well worth the drive. The countryside is quite spectacular, Ely is friendly and, if you decide to engineer one of the steam locomotives at the museum, you’re in for a treat!

The museum is founded around the southern workings of the old Nevada Consolidated Copper Company line that used to run between East Ely and Cobre, where it connected with the Southern Pacific. The railroad's main purpose was to haul copper ore, but it also handled other freight and a daily passenger train ran 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 depot, in the Mission Revival style, was designed by Frederick Hale and built in 1907 (you can see another Mission Revival depot on the Kelso page of this website).

The location of the depot was a matter of contention between the railroad and residents of Ely, who successfully sued to have the depot's 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.

The Machine Shop (left) and Engine House (right) house much of the museum’s motive power collection.

The building was constructed in 1908, and altered in 1917 and 1941. Repairs to motive power and rolling stock are also carried out in the building.

I visited the Nevada Northern Museum in October 2009 to take advantage of the Engineer Rental programme and take the throttle of #93.

The Northern Nevada #93 page on this website tells you more about the locomotive and includes photographs of my return trip from Ely to Keystone.

#93 is a Consolidation type (2-8-0) locomotive, one of four built by Alco in 1909 and sold to the American Smelters Securities Co. to haul ore trains on the Nevada Northern. It cost $17,610, has an empty weight of 187,000 lbs and weighs 168,000 lbs on its drivers, which are 51” in diameter. The cylinders are 21” x 30”. It operates at 190 psi and has a tractive effort of 41,890 lbs.

#93 was sold to Nevada Consolidated Copper in September 1920 when the 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 kept as back up motive power. In 1961, however, Kennecott Copper donated the locomotive to the White Pine Public Museum, where it went on open air display.

In 1990, #93 was traded to the White Pine Historical Railroad Foundation along with all of the museum’s railroad equipment in exchange for the foundation’s Cherry Creek Depot. #93 was towed to the Nevada Northern Railway engine house where work got underway to return the locomotive to operating condition. Three years later, #93 began a new career hauling excursion trains

Inside the Machine Shop, #204 stands amongst the machinery of an operational railroad.

#204 is one of 515 1,750 hp, six-axled SD-9s built by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors between 1954 and 1959 (471 for U.S. railroads, the remainder for export).

#204 was one of 150 SD-9s ordered by the Southern Pacific. It was built in 1956 and delivered as #5468, but was renumbered #3942 in 1965. In 1977, it was rebuilt and renumbered again as #4426. It 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.

Next door, in the engine house, is Rotary Snowplow B, one of the last wood-bodied standard gauge rotary plows still in existence. It was built in 1907 by Alco for the Nevada Northern. 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.

It has not been operated for many years but could be restored to operating condition with a boiler inspection and minor repairs.

The plow is permanently coupled to a tender to provides 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.

#105 is one of 9 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 4 RS-2s to the company in late 1949.

A total of 384 of these switching locomotives were produced from 1946 to 1950, including 9 by Alco’s partner company, the Montreal Locomotive Works in Canada. Thirteen were exported overseas, the remainder were shipped to U.S. railroads.

#105 was one of 353 RS-2s produced with a single 12 cylinder, model 244 engine, which develops 1,500 hp. An additional 31 RS-2s were built by Alco in early 1950 with 1,600 hp engines.

The tender of #81 alongside SD-2 #105 and the tender of Nevada Northern #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, costing $23,700. It has 51” drivers, 21” x 26” cylinders and weighs 155,500 lb.

During its operating life, it hauled both freight and passenger trains, and was donated to the White Pine Public Museum in 1960. It is currently stored in the engine house awaiting reflueing and other routine maintenance.

Wrecking Crane A was purchased from the Industrial Works of Bay City, MI, by the Nevada Northern in 1907. It is a 100 ton steam operated crane and cost $16,015 when built. Industrial Works started manufacturing cranes in 1893 with a 12-ton crane. By 1904, they were building 100 ton cranes and, by 1922, they had reached 200 tons.

Crane A sits on a heavy-duty flat car and pivots on a series of heavy rollers. A boom is extended to create additional lifting torque. It lifted rolling stock and locomotives back onto the track after wrecks or derailments, as well as other heavy objects such as bridge beams. It was used to build the nearby McGill Smelter in 1908, and was in service as recently as 1982 clearing a wreck on the Western Pacific.

Restoration began in 2002 with a $10,000 grant from Trains magazine but, because of other pressing commitments on the museum, it was not until late 2005 that work completed. It is now one of only three operational steam powered wrecking cranes in existence in the U.S.

#81 is an 85 ton overhead powered electric locomotive built by General Electric in 1941, probably for Kennecott Copper’s Chino Mines Division in New Mexico. In 1963, it was moved to the Nevada Mines Division at McGill, where there was about a mile of electrified track.

KCCX #81 was never used on the Nevada Northern Railway.

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 General Electric's early, single-ended locomotives built for industrial use. It has a Cummins HI-600 prime mover, and operated at McGill as a switcher. It never served on the Nevada Northern Railway.

Beyond #301 in the right hand view, is another KCCX locomotive, #801, that never operated on the Nevada Northern.

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 U.S. (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.

#801 is a 1,000 hp diesel-electric switcher delivered to the Bingham & Garfield Railway in 1942 as #801, where it operated as a yard switcher at Magna, UT. It was transferred to Kennecott Copper’s Chino Mines Division in New Mexico as #80 in 1949, and then moved to the Kennecott Nevada Mines Division in 1963, where it was renumbered #801 again. It worked as a switcher at the McGill plant until 1983 but was never used on the Nevada Northern Railway during its life time.

548 VO-1000s were built by Baldwin from 1939 to 1946, all for U.S. railroads. They weigh 236,000 lbs and have a tractive effort of 70,500 lbs. Only seven examples survive.

Another VO-1000 was owned by KCC. It was originally delivered to the Bingham & Garfield in 1943 as #803, and transferred to the KCC in 1948. It has not survived.

Visible on the left of the upper photo of NN #81 is a potbelly stove with the stamp “D&RGRW 1882” on its door.

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 Railway?

The closest the D&RGRW came to the Nevada Northern was its terminus at Salt Lake City, 160 miles from Cobre and 240 miles from Ely. Both stoves were already 25 years old when they arrived and, surely, there were potbellies to be purchased closer to hand!

#109 is another of the 384 RS-2s built by Alco between 1946 and 1950. At present, the museum does not know much about the locomotive’s provenance

On the right, #109 stands beside NN #40 and NN #93. #109, like #105, is available for rental under the museum’s engineer rental programme.

You can learn more about the locomotive in the description of RS-2 #105 earlier on this 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 a thorough inspection and overhaul that completed in early 2005. It then returned to service, and provides both passenger excursions and engineer rentals.

When I visited the museum, USA MRS-1 #B-2080 and #B-2081 were parked outside the engine house.

These 1,600 hp MRS-1 diesel-electrics were built by Alco in 1953 (Builder’s number 80936 and 80937), two of 96 produced for the U.S. Army Transportation Corps between 1953 and 1954. They weigh 240,000 lbs and have a tractive effort of 30,700 lbs. 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.

Most went into storage at the USATC's Transportation Materiel Command facility at Marietta, PA, where they remained 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 decided to transfer the units to the U.S. Navy. Subsequently, 13 were sold to the Alaska Railroad, and 2 to the Administración de Ferrocarriles del Estado in Uruguay. A number of others have survived.

#4303 was built by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors Corporation in 1954 as SP #5354. It was renumbered #3814 in 1965 and then, after a rebuild in 1970, was renumbered #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.

471 1,750 hp EMD SD9s were built for U.S. railroads between 1954 and 1959, and 44 for export. 150 were delivered to the SP, including 52 equipped with steam generators for passenger service.

A number of SD-9s survive, although #4303 is not operational due to a short in the main generator. It is now used for spare parts.

The 8 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 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 ensuing years. The corrugated metal sheeting mounted on the sides, for example, is an addition to the original wooden cab and housing.

Spreaders are used to remove snow, spread gravel, build banks and trim embankments of brush along the side of track. They are pushed by a locomotive, which also supplies power, but are operated by a separate crew. Like #360, most spreaders have a large front plow, and side wings that could push snow well clear of tracks.

#360 is one of the oldest maintenance-of-way machines in existence.

This is one of five, unnumbered four wheel maintenance of way flat cars in the museum’s collection.

Little is known about these cars, except that they may date from the 1920s and were probably coupled to motor cars when in use.

Looking west across East Ely Yard.

Looking east.

The Car Repair Shop 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 done in the open on the tracks, which must have been challenging in winter!

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 structurally 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 stand in front of East Ely depot awaiting passengers for one of the museum’s excursions.

Because of its remoteness and the gradual decline of the mining industry that gave birth to it, the East Ely yard escaped major modernisation and it is now one of the best preserved and most complete historic main yard complexes in the U.S. It includes 39 historic buildings and 75 historic structures including rolling stock.

The rail yards were listed as a National Historic Landmark in September 2006.