On the road again - Ely, Nevada

In May during an RV trip that included parts of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada I was able to visit a rail museum that I had been wanting to visit for a long time, The Nevada Northern Railway in Ely, Nevada.  Ely is located along US 50 which has been labeled "the loneliest road in America".  We had passed through Ely once about 30 years ago and at that time visited the abandoned Kennecott copper pit which was why this railroad was built back in the early 1900's.

One of the impressive things about this particular museum how much property and buildings it includes.  This was all donated to the museum foundation when Kennecott closed down the copper pit.  It is amazing to me all the facilities that were required to run what is not a very big railroad in the steam era.  This first photo is of the passenger station which included the railroad headquarters on the second floor.  The second floor is maintained just as it was when it last operated.

This is just one of the upstairs rooms in the station building.  With the bay window, this room could have been used as a yard tower. 

Within the really large shop building, they let visitors wander throughout all long as you don't climb onto any of the equipment.  When I was there, repair or restoration work was happening on several pieces of equipment.

The yard area was also quite large with all the facilities a steam railroad would need.  There were also quite a few examples of freight cars parked in the yard.  Mostly box cars, open hoppers, and gondolas, all letters for the Nevada Northern.

While there I went for a train ride up Robinson Canyon to the site of the now closed copper pit that the railroad had served.  The train was pulled by a VO-1000 and had two heavyweight coaches, an open car and a caboose.  The caboose was not accessible to the passengers but we could wander the other three cars.  I spent most of the ride on the open car.

Michael was our conductor for this trip.  He is very knowledgeable about the history of this railroad and is also an Z scale modeler and we had some good conservation about modeling and the prototype.

I did a short YouTube video on my visit, here's the link to it: Visit to the Northern Nevada Railway Museum.  The Nevada Northern Railway is a bit out of the way but definitely worth a visit. They have things going on year round.   Here's a link to their website:  https://nnry.com/