michael and garys northern nevada road trip

so back home, and back at it processing, moving into day 2 of the lerro photography charter on the virginia & truckee railroad, based out of virginia city nevada. here is the day 2 sunrise shots, a little more sunrise since we started out of the station earlier. in case anyone was wondering these were done with the time honored tradition of the chase train, a diesel locomotive with a coach attached dropping us off at selected runby spots and then moving out of sight



a little later that morning at overman fill, a large fill made from pit mining tailings, the pit is to the right of this photo

 

Fantastic!

 

after the lunch break v&t brought #18 their restored but not yet fully road certified steam loco out for a little running in the yard limits, here are both locos posed at the virginia city depot area



and #18 moving on its own, #18, ex mccloud river, a baldwin 2-8-2, built october 1914, just returned from 1472 day fra inspection

 

so after lunch, lets go out to one of the tunnels, and let's smoke one up for victor, victor hand is an elderly gentleman, who is legendary in the railfan photography community, both for how good his photos are, and how many places he has traveled worldwide and how many photos he has taken, most of them in black and white with a 4x5 sheet film speed graphic, yeah victor is old school, but a nice man, last year he donated his collection to the center for railroad photography and art, to be digitized and into their public database, 46,000 photos, so it is a pretty good bet that if it ran steam in the last 70 years, victor has photographed it, and he likes a train bursting out of a tunnel, wreathed in smoke

 

last shot for day 2, concluding the virginia & truckee portion of our rail extravaganza, thursday was a travel day, a rather lengthy one as we journeyed 310 miles across some more of that desolate nevada countryside, up and over 9 passes, none of them under 6400 feet on route 50, bills itself as the loneliest highway in america, to ely nevada, for 2 1/2 days of photographer weekend on the nevada norther railroad museum. and a late afternoon, we do love the glint

 

so after thursdays travel day, it is now friday afternoon, we are at the northern nevada railroad museum, in ely nevada, on the self proclaimed route 50 "the loneliest road in america". and it is. friday afternoon was all yard movement, the wreck crane demo, some early alco diesel movements and a night shoot with a late 50's highrailer station wagon. the yard is pretty good sized so they can put together a real length train and move it around a few tracks, they have the large original coaling tower, shops, etc.

 

so this was pretty cool, they have a steam powered wreck crane, they brought it out, steamed it up and did a demo lift of a hopper car, into the air and then back onto the tracks, to simulate rerailing a car from a wreck/derail

 

they made up a train pulled by a couple of first gen alco diesels and moved around out by the yard limits and the turning wye , ran out one of the branches here, i did not feel like walking out that far, but my first train locomotives i ever saw as a child say around 1960, i was 7 and old enough to be aware of trains on the long island railroad branch running through the farm fields about a half mile behind my childhood home, might very well have been pulled by alcos such as these



getting on towards late afternoon



and because both cars were gm products miss vito, were both cars available in mint metallic green??, yes they were.!!! although i am pretty sure a railroad would not have painted a highrailer station wagon in mint metallic green

 

What is a YUTE?

 

i am not sure, but i do know there were two of them, nice dialogue segue john

 

the world out there is a fascinating place, full of strange and unusual sights , i knew that the services provided here are legal in parts, but not all of nevada, but i never expected this to be the first photo of the day, saturday morning as we moved out towards the first location. the nevada northern is kind of a misshapen Y and we backed out of the yard and are now moving southbound on the long leg. i should be grateful that at least i had a lens on the camera, although by the slight but noticeable blur i did not have quite the right shutter speed, so i present to you, the big four ranch



the engine this morning is #93, alco 2-8-0, built january 1909 at the alco pittsburgh works, and again a historical thing, one of the few locomotives in america running on the original line that it was built for, and again we railfan photographers love those tunnel shots



and again, a glimpse of the desolate isolated nature of northern nevada, ely is about 6 or so miles behind me here, and other than a little bit of the town, there is nothing else and i do mean absolutely nothing visible for miles around. i grew up in a small town, can remember it getting its first stoplight, and do not live in a very large community now, and i respect people and the urge to live in a rural area such as this, but this is just too remote for me, no way



last location of the day, and nevada decided to show us some love, with a brief window of sun, and i do believe the train crew caught some grief for running over on due back time, but they hung in and gave us this, an old line side telephone shack, where a train crew could stop and get orders, or call in trouble

 

so on to sunday, due to the threat of snow squalls, some passes to go thr0ugh, and some dissatisfaction with how the railroad ran things, michael and i left in early afternoon for the drive back to las vegas, which turned out just fine, only 1 real mountain pass, which had no real snow coming down and we made it back to vegas by suppertime, so the next set processed and some posted will be from lost wages, non railroad, but interesting just the same,
so here is sunday morning, and yes those are snow flakes swirling around our train


"because that's how we do it here" . there is sort of a photographic issue with this train , let's see who can spot it, which on saturday resulted in the label of "your guys, they are troublemakers" being applied to some of us. perhaps some day at pixelmania over an adult beverage the sordid tale can be spoken



out where what they call the high line branches of from the main that had continued on up through this desolate valley floor, the old yard limit sign, there was in fact a small yard here where the ore cars would pulled to until there were enough to makeup a train to go north for interchange



and that concludes the rail portion of our journey, a little more to come from the vegas strip

 

Yellow caboose not at the end? And is that a passenger car at the end? That's all I got.

 

winner winner chicken dinner, john gets it

 

Well, it doesn't say much if I am the one who figured out what was wrong!

 

It’s actually an Outfit Car which is an old passenger car converted for train crew use. It would have been used to move track workers and equipment from place to place.

But yeah, you spotted the issue.

 

The yellow was the outfit? Or that last car?

 

Last car is the outfit car. Yellow is a caboose.

 

During this time of social distancing I am using it to learn stuff! That is today's nugget of knowedlge for me! Thank you @gary and @mSummers !

Funny thing is, we all social distance from each other here like 350 some days a year!

 

since i too am social distancing and on telephone triage on call for work, i am making use of this time to do photo processing, and working away on watching star wars, in machete order of course, struggling my way through episode 5, the empire strikes back, does this movie get good anywhere?? i am going to force myself today to watch it through, it always loses me at about the swamp, it just so far does not do anything for me as a movie at all. whereas the 1977 movie rocks my cinematic world every time, just as it did in the theater in 1977

so ok, we are done with trains, have driven down from the high plains into the mojave desert location of las vegas, checked in to the hotel, got cleaned up, went to eat and then drove over to the strip, about 6 miles away from our hotel, on the other side of the airport, you can actually see some of the gaudiness from the road along the south side of the airport, parked at the bellaggio, and fulfilled a bucket list item, i got to see the bellaggio fountain show. we will start off with a few from the bellaggio conservatory, these are all flower topiary





and some statuary/sculpture, not sure why they chose rats??