The Shop

When my wife Joan and I first started as volunteers at the Nevada Northern Railway Museum in 1999, we discovered a wooden combine car squirreled away in the back of the enginehouse. Someone had started to restore the car and quit, leaving it in the most gawd-awful orangish-yellow color. Not knowing any better, Joan and […]

by Marty Westland, CMO When I first sat down to write a column about our recent achievements in the shop, it seemed logical to begin simply by listing the projects we have completed. The list is long and the recounting would be pleasant. But after some consideration, I began to realize that it is not

by Jerry Cesak The following is the second and final part of an article by Jerry Cesak as he relates his experience renting steam locomotive 93. I stood there in my pristine new overalls and work shirt, spotless engineer’s hat, immaculate gloves, sporting two camera bags, a water bottle, and the face of a six

by Jerry Cesak The following is an article by Jerry Cesak. He rented steam locomotive 93 last year. For those of us in the business-around steam locomotives on a daily basis-one of our greatest dangers is to become passé about this mechanical marvel. We sometimes forget how steam captured us and forget the sense of

[Editor’s Note: The Discovery Channel has a program called “Dirty Jobs” where Mike the host goes around the country doing a variety of dirty jobs. Well, the Nevada Northern Railway has a dirty job for Mike. What follows is an open letter inviting Mike to come to the Nevada Northern and get really dirty.] Dear

Hanging in the East Ely Depot is a photographic show of the museum complex. I took a moment the other day to study the photographs. One of the photographs is of the machine shop. In studying the photograph, I was struck at the amount of progress that has been accomplished in the shop complex. This

It was a very busy summer. The museum is on track (sorry, pun intended,) to beat last year’s record year of 12,415 passengers. So far this year we have carried 9,832 passengers. This year tested the museum’s capabilities and I’m happy to report, we passed with flying colors. On May 16th, we started daily operations.

It is easy to get wrapped up on the large projects at the museum. So far this year, we put Locomotive 40 back in operation and saved the enginehouse from collapse. Work continues on the steam powered wrecking crane, the ashpit, the McGill Depot, track, and the other outbuildings. Trains are operating seven days a

Two-hundred thousand dollars is a great deal of money until you look at the needs of the enginehouse/machine shop building. Seventy-nine thousand dollars had already been invested in the building and we had barely scratched the surface. The engineering studies had been done and we knew what we were facing. Our two biggest challenges were

When you talk about the railroad museum, it is easy to get wrapped up in the trains and track. Yet a huge piece of the museum, the piece that the public sees first, is usually overlooked. Without this component, we would not have much of a museum. It is this component, in addition to the