Vir­ginia & Truc­kee
Loco­mo­tive #27

Last Mon­day, I paid a visit to the Nevada State Rail­road Museum in Car­son City. I’ve always been fas­ci­nated by trains — I used to spend long hours play­ing with my elec­tric train set, tak­ing over as much floor space in the liv­ing room as I could get away with. I still like watch­ing trains go by, and have taken some rail­road pho­tos before. The museum is small, but they’ve man­aged to pack quite a bit into the avail­able space. Also, they’ve done a pretty good job with the inter­pre­tive signs that accom­pany each exhibit. The museum’s col­lec­tion and exhibits focus on the Vir­ginia & Truc­kee Rail­road. The V&T was a short line that ran from 1870 until 1938 1950, con­nect­ing the mines in and around Vir­ginia City with ore pro­cess­ing plants in Car­son City and Reno. Pas­sen­ger trains ran between these cities and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties, as well. Update: See NSRM vol­un­teer Jim Lohse’s com­ment on this post for more about the final days of the V&T.

V&T #22 — Inyo

The crown jewel of the museum’s col­lec­tion is Vir­ginia & Truc­kee Loco­mo­tive #22, which was given the name Inyo. The Inyo was built in 1875 by the Bald­win Loco­mo­tive Works in Philadel­phia, PA. The loco­mo­tive pulled both freight and pas­sen­ger trains on the V&T for about 50 years, being more or less retired in 1926. This yeo­man ser­vice surely earned the Inyo the admi­ra­tion of its engi­neers and crew, but its real fame did come about until later. In 1937, Para­mount Pic­tures acquired two loco­mo­tives and a num­ber of rail­cars from the V&T for use in movies. The Inyo’s first on-screen appear­ance was in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Ham­mer­stein musi­cal High, Wide, and Hand­some. The loco­mo­tive also appeared in Union Pacific, Red River, and The Great Loco­mo­tive Chase. But, the role in which I know the Inyo best is in the old TV show “The Wild Wild West” — the 60s series on which the hor­ri­ble Will Smith/Kevin Kline movie was loosely based. Para­mount sold the Inyo to the State of Nevada in 1974, and sub­se­quently under­went restora­tion to its orig­i­nal appear­ance and functionality.

A Union Pacific Caboose
Out­side the Museum

In addi­tion to the two loco­mo­tives pic­tured above (and their ten­ders), the main museum build­ing cur­rently houses a box car, a flat car, and a cou­ple of pas­sen­ger coaches. There are a cou­ple of smaller-scale exhibits as well. HO-scale mod­els of var­i­ous his­toric pas­sen­ger trains are dis­played in a case next to a work­ing HO lay­out. A small case con­tains items from Nevada’s “Merci Car” — one of 49 box­cars given to the cit­i­zens of the US by France fol­low­ing World War II. My favorite of the smaller exhibits was “Loco­mo­tive Sto­ries of the V&T.” This con­sists of exquis­itely detailed hand­made mod­els of six­teen V&T loco­mo­tives, cre­ated by George L. Richard­son and donated to the museum. The mod­els are accom­pa­nied by pho­tographs of the orig­i­nal loco­mo­tives in ser­vice, infor­ma­tion about their con­struc­tion and use, and details about their cur­rent sta­tuses and post V&T uses, if any.

Turntable and Roundhouse

The museum grounds include a num­ber of things out­side the main build­ing. A Union Pacific caboose (pic­tured above) sits on rails just out­side the museum proper. Not far from that is a round­house with accom­pa­ny­ing turntable. The muse­ums col­lec­tion is much larger that what is on dis­play, and at any one time, a few of its pieces are under­go­ing restora­tion. Although I wasn’t able to inves­ti­gate fur­ther, I assume that this round­house is used for both stor­age and restora­tion. A short track encir­cles the museum grounds, con­nect­ing to the round­house and serv­ing a small recre­ated sta­tion. Steam trains and gas-powered motor­cars tra­verse this track dur­ing warmer months — I look for­ward to revis­it­ing the museum when they’re running.