2020-04-14 Nevada Northern Railway Museum 

My previous gopher post ended with a lament that I won't be able to go to
museums any time soon, and therefore there will be no new museum reviews in my
gopher hole for a while.

Well I was wrong.

I am not able to go far from home to visit museums, but I can go back in time.
So here's a review of a train museum I visited well over a decade ago.  This
will be a short review because it is based on remnants of memory.

The Northern Nevada Railway Museum is located in Ely (pronounced Eee-Lee), a
town in east central Nevada, the exact place people are referring to when they
say "the middle of nowhere". 250 miles north of Las Vegas, 320 miles east of
Reno, and more than 100 miles from the nearest interstate (I-80).  You don't
get to Ely by accident.  Or if you did end up there by accident, you must have
gone really, really, really far off your route.

Much of Ely's history is of that of a boom and bust mining town.  Gold was first
discovered there in the late 1800's, and periods of intense gold and then
copper mining occurred over the next 100+ years.  In 1906, the Nevada Northern
Railway was completed, supporting the extraction of copper from the area and
its delivery around 140 north to other, larger rail connections.  The presence
of the railway dominated much of the remaining history of the area. 

The museum preserves much of the memory of the railway's history in Ely.  In
addition to a depot building (which we weren't able to enter for some reason at
that time), the museum consists of an engine barn and a repair shop.  In these
buildings, mechanics work to restore and maintain old steam engines, boxcars,
cabooses, and slightly more modern diesel engines.  It is fascinating to see
the size of the parts the make up these engines, and to watch (and interact
with) the mechanics at work.

And the mechanics aren't just restoring the engines for fun.  The museum
regularly runs visitors on passenger trains up a stretch of track.  One popular
run is around Halloween when they do a ghost train themed ride.

Despite the small size of the city of Ely, and the remoteness of the area, the
museum is packed with all sorts of fascinating machines.  One of my favorites
was a rotary snowplow -- a massive array of spinning circular blades affixed to
the front of a train, used to clear tracks covered in DEEP snow so that the
main lines can go through.

Unfortunately, a decade and a half is a long time for the details of this
museum to have decayed in my head, and I can't remember much more.  One other
memorable aspect of Ely that comes to mind, however, was the hotel in which we
stayed: the "Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall", a landmark that predates the more
famous glitter and sleaze of Nevada's now more famous cities of Vegas and Reno.
Standing at a towering six stories high, the hotel was built in 1931 when it
was the tallest building in all of Nevada.  The main memory I have of the hotel
was this awesome mural on the building's side [3].

While I don't normally do something as undignified as pointing my dear readers
away from plaintext and toward "pictures", this is one case in which I think
the maneuver is justified.  Spend some time browsing this image search for
"nevada northern railway museum". Or this picture of a rotary snowplow [2].

If you have an interest in trains, especially railway history, the Nevada
Northern Railway Museum is a really interesting place to visit.  Unfortunately,
the remoteness of Ely makes it a hard trip to plan.  But if remoteness appeals
to you (it does to me!) you may consider a trip to Ely partly to appreciate
the stunning beauty of the U.S. Great Basin region.  Great Basin National
Park lies just around an hour east of Ely, and while any drive to Ely is a
long one, the expansive views are remarkable.  I highly recommend it, although
I'm well aware that it's an odd recommendation.

-- 

[1] Nevada Northern Railway Museum Pictures
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nevada+northern+railroad+museum&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images 

[2] Rotary Snowplow
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rotary+snowplow&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images

[3] Hotel Nevada mural
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/2012.10.03.160037_Aultman_Street_Ely_Nevada.jpg