Day 12, Tuesday 9/28/2021

Today was another travel day. We went from Draper, UT, a suburb of Salt Lake City, to Ely, Nevada.

While supercharging at West Wendover, we had lunch at the Peppermill Casino in one of their restaurants, The Cafe Milano. We had Kung Pao Chicken over noodles but forgot to take any pictures. It was really quite tasty. We realize that Milano in the name does not suggest Chinese. The menu was really quite varried.

Nevada Northern Railway

The Nevada Northern Railroad was built to support a large copper mine just outside of Ely, Nevada. When the mining company converted to shipping ore via trucks, they shut down the railroad. Pretty much the entire railroad was donated to a non-profit that now owns and operates it. The headquarters are located in East Ely along with the railroad yard and all of its associated buildings and equipment. We took a few pictures while our car was charging at one of their EV power outlets.

The big red building in the background is the freight house, where goods are stored before loading for shipment or delivering to recipients.

This is a close-up of the freight house from the rail side.

This is the train that we will ride tomorrow. The engine is still in the engine house.

A closer view of the passenger cars, though we might be riding in the engine cab due to a scheduling SNAFU on their part.

The large steel building in the background is used for some repairs.

This is the water tower and coaling station that is used only for steam engines. The railroad switched from steam power to diesel circa 1950.

Here is what appears to be one of the original wooden box cars used to transfer freight from the main line down to Ely.

This picture illustrates the reason for the railroad. The red cars, hoppers, transported copper ore. On the caboose, you can almost read "Kennecott", one of the owners of the copper mine.

The brown car here is a "flanger", It had a plow on the front and sides to spread ballast.

Here is a crane. Notice that it occupies two flat cars. It was used for derailments, wash outs, and new construction.

At the end of the day we had travelled 262 miles for a current total of 3610.

For those following our adventure, tonight we added about 60 pictures to day 10.

On to day 13.

Back to the adventure home page.