Day 6: The Nevada Northern Railroad (part 2)

Extremely early start this time, I was down at the railroad depot at 6am, well before sunrise. Had a quick bite to eat then headed off to the workshop with my tripod and shutter cable.

Wow! What a place! The moment I entered I was stunned; it was full of noise, damp humid warmth, thick with the smell of old oil, dense clouds of smoke wafted and the ceiling lamps cast beautiful cones of light. Inside a plethora of locomotives stood, ranging from beautiful RS3s, to "functional" Baldwin switchers, though to three beautiful steam locos.

 

Our two locos for the day, 40 and 93 were busy being prepared, having been woken at 3am by the crews. It was a bit like one of those thriller movies set in a power plant where every pipe and valve seems to randomly hiss and vent steam.

By 6:45am (that's 3:45am NZ time!) the engines were ready to emerge into the cold fresh air. And it was pretty fresh outside, well below freezing.

And so as the first ways of sunlight touched the yard, the locos ventured outside.

 

Steam locos and crisp winter mornings make for fantastic displays, and there was no shortage of steam in the yard. At times it was a little ridiculous though!

 

Being a photographer's special they repeated each move a few times to make sure we all got the shots we wanted. Some of my favourite shots where when they were reversing back into the shed, or just looking the other way and admiring the amazing scenery here.

 

By 8am we had sort of done the "emerging from the shed" thing to death, so the locos started putting together our trains for the day. I'd already taken 150 photos and the sun was barely even up! But then with scenery like this… can you blame me?

 

Our freight train assembled we set off on a new line, this time towards the… actually I'm not sure, ever since they made the sun shine from the south I've been very disorientated. But it was a very pretty line, as you can see:

Which way? Nowhere, or nowhere?

The wide open spaces here are pretty utterly amazing. We chose a spot and set up for some runbys.

Being out here in the desert was pretty amazing. The temperature was barely above freezing, the (surprisingly strong) sun was warming our backs and the sharp, slightly tangy aroma of sage brush filled the air; and of course to top it all off here I was taking photos of a steam train. Just magical!

By now I was up to 430 photos since 6am; what can I say, with scenery like this everything is photogenic. Even the going away shots were worth shooting:

(We were riding in the red Pullman carriage at the rear; a very smooth ride)

We chose another spot, this time by what we were assured was an old telephone box. Most of us had other theories!

One of the golden rules of train photography is to always shoot with the sun behind you, and yet, out here, doing exactly what you're not supposed to do can make for some pretty amazing results too:

More photos, it's now nearly 10am; back in NZ, most people are only just starting to wake up. The scale of the landscape here is just mind blowing.

By now it was almost midday so we went back to the depot for a beautiful lunch of lasagne with cheesecake for dessert. Unfortunately there had been a bit of a mishap while we were gone and a wagon had derailed, so the Nevada Northern had fired up their steam crane to get things running again.

… Actually they had deliberately (and probably very carefully) derailed a wagon for us in order to give us a real life demonstration of their steam crane. It was pretty cool to watch as things whirred, pistons hissed, and wheels spun. I couldn't actually see the cables for the hook moving, but sure enough the hopper was very skilfully placed back on the rails.

With that taken care off it was back up the line to Ruth.

Watching the train speed by / horse lodging in Ely, NV

I enjoyed the contrast here: satellite dishes and cellphone towers, vs a 100 year old steam loco.

We stopped at a few spots and although more varied geographically, I preferred the photos from the empty desert. However a few of us with mountain goat in our genes decided to scale a nearby hillside:

While I like the photo, it lacks the simplicity and contrast of the earlier photos. Around the corner there were some nice tunnel shots:

By now we'd been out for over 9 hours, so once the shadows started getting long we had one last shoot and headed back home.

Oh I almost forgot! At one point a guy rolled up with a very big video camera and started interviewing Steve Crise about the Nevada Northern Railroad and the photographer's weekend. Afterwards there were a few runbys and then someone called me over… I was about to be interviewed! Well… I hadn't expected that I'd be interviews, but apparently being the only one from outside of North America made me something of a celebrity. So John asked me a few questions, and then asked what folks back home thought. Well… I had to confess that many of my friends, even those who have no interest in trains, were intensely jealous and had pleaded to come with me next time :-)

So I might just end up on a promotional video about the Nevada Northern Railroad!

That night we had an informal dinner and presentation on the history of the Nevada Northern Railroad, which was fascinating. The restaurant/casino where we ate was heated to Miami levels, which was a bit rough after spending all day in single digit temps. However the meal was good, and we had a good chat about the future of the railroad. The Nevada Northern is an odd hybrid of part museum, part tourist railroad, part commercial operation. As recent as 2000 they were hauling copper ore to the Union Pacific interchange at Shafter, over a 100 miles to the north. Since then though the traffic has dried up and the desert has reclaimed 65 miles of track. Maybe one day…?

Walked home after the presentation back to my nice snug wee motel room. Alarm clock was set for 5:10am, ready for another action packed day of steam photography.

PS: You'll notice none of my photos star a guy that looked a lot like Compo from Last of the Summer Wine, only wielding a cellphone and wearing a black ski suit. You have no idea how hard that was! Ditto the guy with a 50mm prime lens on his film camera (no zoom, how handy!) – I didn't see him take a single photo the whole weekend, he preferred to just hover just on the edges of everyone's photos. That said everyone else was very well behaved.

PPS: I took over 1200 photos this weekend, hence the slightly delay :-)