Nevada Surprises

 

In which Moominmama rides the Nevada Northern Railway, and hikes in the Great Basin...

Moominmama was hoping to take a train ride behind a 115-year-old steam engine here in Ely (pronounced: EE-lee), Nevada. Dropping by the station to buy a ticket for the next day, I was able to get some photos as they fired up the boiler on Engine #93. 

One of the interesting things about this railroad museum is that it's a living history museum (and national landmark under the U.S. Parks Service) with a complete rail yard. 

The cavernous machine shop holds up to eight locomotives or other train cars, and a new generation of machinists and mechanics is learning to maintain them. 

Unfortunately, old #93 dropped a wheel mechanism after I took this photo, and the machine shop was not able to fix it in time for Moominmama's trip a day later. Moominmama had to settle for a 1950s diesel engine instead - see photo above. 

Not the same at all.

But as part of the visit to the rail yard, I learned a lot about the care and maintenance of steam engines (three hours of maintenance required for every hour of use). Its history in Ely centers on the copper mines nearby and the need to transport the ore from the town of Ruth nearby to the smelter in McGill. 

The Nevada Northern also expanded into passenger service, connecting nearby towns. But by 1941, trains were replaced by buses, and in the 1960s, the steam engines were replaced by diesel. The final blow came in 1983, when the Northern Nevada railway, not a transcontinental route but only feeder line, closed for good. Efforts by the community have since preserved it as a museum and training ground for historic restoration.

Since winning historic landmark status, the nonprofit Northern Nevada has also collected old train cars and equipment from other defunct rail yards, and it's most recent acquisition is this railcar built in Philadelphia in the 1930s. It's called the Doodlebug, not sure why!

In total, they now have four steam locomotives, six diesel and multiple passenger coaches, some of them with lovely historic details, like filigreed door handles and old lanterns. 

One of their prize possessions is Engine #40, known as the Ghost Train of Ely. After World War II, the locomotive was due to be scrapped, but the rail yard crews, who loved her, hid her whenever the scrap yard bosses came to claim her. 

How do you hide a 68-ton locomotive? Well, turns out, 18 miles of track inside the mine and multiple buildings the train could enter or pass through, like the town's mill, gave them plenty of options. 

The crews moved her at night and plans to scrap her were eventually abandoned, but she picked up the nickname: the Ghost Train as a result. It will be several years, though, before this restoration project is complete!

Nevada is surprisingly mountainous, especially here in the eastern part of the state. This is an area, like Death Valley, where the earth's mantle pulled apart and slabs of rock tipped into the gaps, creating a sequence of mountains and valleys. In contrast to Death Valley, I've picked a higher elevation to camp at this time, near Ward Mountain.

I love being surrounded by the fragrant trio of piñon pine, juniper and sagebrush in the Humboldt Toiyabe National Forest. Camped at about 7,000 feet, I see the snow-covered 11,000-foot Ward peak in the distance even as I'm warm and dry below.

The Great Basin is the last of the deserts I will be visiting this spring. It is not as dry as the Mohave or Sonoran deserts but does suffer from being cut off from Pacific moisture by the Sierras and the Cascades. The Great Basin covers most of Nevada and about half of Utah as well as extending into a handful of other states. This is largely Shoshone, Paiute and Ute territory.

It's called the Great Basin because the water does not drain out towards any ocean. Rain and snow melt are contained inside the basin, pooling in ponds and lakes until it evaporates, which leaves behind any minerals in the water, like in the Great Salt Lake.

Moominmama heads next to Utah, to the San Rafael desert also part of the Great Basin. I'm looking forward to seeing the crazy sandstone hoodoos that gave Goblin Valley its name! I leave you with a tiny flower I found on a hike outside Ely. It's maybe five inches across. I haven't seen many flowers here in Nevada, but this was a beauty!