Nevada Train Trip

[kevin_standlee]

The Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City is listing its schedules for the entire year, so I'm hoping that the funding to keep the museum open was found and the threat in the early drafts of the Nevada state budget to close the museum averted. However, the museum is only open Friday-Monday, making it difficult to combine a visit to the museum with a Worldcon trip (although not impossible, since Renovation is Wednesday-Sunday). Also, the main reason Lisa and I want to go there is to ride the restored McKeen Motor Car, the only operable one in the world. Lisa and I got a sort of private viewing of the car while it was under restoration some years ago when we visited on a particularly slow afternoon.

They only run the McKeen Car on certain days. In fact, they're only planning too operate it three days this year: May 8, July 4, and October 29. So, if we can swing it, Lisa is going to come down here and the two of us will make an extended weekend visit to the Carson City-Reno area on the weekend of May 7-8. At the moment, I'm thinking of taking at least one and maybe two vacation days after that as well, since you can get amazingly good hotel rates in Reno on Sunday-Thursday nights. It means a little hotel in-and-outing, since we'd probably spend Saturday night only at the Holiday Inn Express in Carson City, but with the rates so good in Reno, it's hard to pass up the deal.

Nothing is set in stone yet, and I haven't even had a chance to discuss specifics with Lisa, but that weekend looks to be the best fit I can find so far.

Comments

[travelswithkuma.livejournal.com]

Bears likes tos gos places. Woulds Bears gets theres pictures tooks?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Almost certainly! Even better, Bears ride free!

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Neat! The McKeen Motor Car looks great, especially that curved bench and the porthole window all around. The design is so coherent it sings. Sharp corners and curves, curves curves. The exterior doors, the point of the car and the lines of its cowcatcher. That great curve down to the passenger door and back up again, accented so beautifully by the pin striping on the paint job.

I laughed at the "where nobpdy has gone before" sign on the floor of the loo,


Wow, the pictures show just how big a the restoration was! I can see why you'd make a special trip just to ride it even if you didn't have the memory of that fortuitous viewing while the restoration was underway. I look forward to reading your report of the run itself. Early May sounds like a great time to do it.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the ride will only be on the museum's short demonstration track. It would be great if they could somehow arrange to operate it on the nearby restored Virginia & Truckee Railroad. Alas, both the museum and the V&T are isolated trackage and any movement of rail equipment between them has to be via road.

The original V&T ran from a mainline connection at Reno to Carson City and from there east to Virginia City (and also south to Minden). The train station in Reno had V&T tracks to the south of the Southern Pacific line on the north side of the station, according to pictures I've seen at the rebuilt Amtrak station. (There was also a separate station for the Nevada-California-Oregon Railroad; the station building still exists under another use, and Lisa and I have walked by it during several of our stays in Reno.)

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Saw something last night that made me think of you. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain) did a return visit to Cambodia ten years after his first visit.

To get to the interior of the largest rice-growing region, where there are no roads, they had to take a trip on the rails. But the the trains were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. Enterprising Cambodians salvaged axles and wheels, and built wooden decks with whatever engines they could find. Motorcycle, outboard, anything that could provide power. These "flatcars" atr literally the only way in and out of the area. Pretty neat stuff.