Weekly Outing – Nevada State Railroad Museum

Posted on 09/10/2020 by Andrew Reynolds

Last Friday we braved the heat and smoke to drive to Carson City to see the Nevada State Railroad Museum.  We’ve always loved railroads and love seeing the old steam trains.  Heather grew up with steam trains in England and loves a chance to see one.

A nice thing about being retired is getting to see the museum on an off day when the crowds aren’t there.  We were about the only people in the place on Friday so got walk around without worrying about social distancing.  The exhibits at the moment are focusing on the completion of the transcontinental road in 1869.

The expansion of the west and much of the early growth of Nevada is directly attributable to the coming of the railway.  Even today, Reno and the areas around are hubs of transportation including trucks and rail.  Even today warehouses and product distribution centers are large employers in the area.

The museum has a number of historical engines and cars.  Their restoration teams have done a wonderful job of bringing these old treasures back to life.  I’m willing to guess that in some cases the restored rolling stock is in better condition that it was during service.

They weren’t running any of the trains the day we were they, so we got a schedule of when they’ll be running the steam train and are planning on going back for one of their operations days.

After our visit we stopped for great sandwiches at the LA Bakery in Carson City.  A trick we learned a long time ago to is ask the staff and volunteers for restaurant recommendations and again we were not disappointed.  The place was a bit off the beaten path and I doubt we would have discovered on our own.

Here are some pictures I took of what they had on display outside.

Nevada State Railroad Museum main entrance.
One of the big doors that lets trains go into the museum building for display. The three rails allow for standard and narrow gage trains to be put on display.
A restored rail car.
A mining car. The bucket can be tilted to the side to dump its contents.
This steam engine was out of the shed and getting ready for an operations weekend. We were told that it can several hours to heat up the boiler before it has enough steam to actually move anywhere.
A little purchase from the gift shop. You can’t have too many mugs.

About Andrew Reynolds

Born in California Did the school thing studying electronics, computers, release engineering and literary criticism. I worked in the high tech world doing software release engineering and am now retired. Then I got prostate cancer. Now I am a blogger and work in my wood shop doing scroll saw work and marquetry.
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21 Responses to Weekly Outing – Nevada State Railroad Museum

  1. Christi says:
    09/20/2020 at 5:48 pm

    Never met a man yet who didn’t love trains. 😉
    Are you seeing much smoke where you are? I thought you would have escaped that.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. robertawrites235681907 says:
    09/16/2020 at 10:17 pm

    Wonderful, I also love steam trains.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Roger Fox says:
    09/12/2020 at 2:12 am

    It’s amazing that you were almost the only people in this place. Great trip.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Baydreamer says:
    09/11/2020 at 4:28 pm

    Thanks for taking us with you on this wonderful outing. The photos are great and glad you had a chance to go when it wasn’t crowded.

    Like

  5. Mama's Empty Nest says:
    09/11/2020 at 7:11 am

    That would be a great place for my train enthusiast hubby to visit. We’ll have to put it on our list should we ever get back to Nevada again some day. Like you, we totally enjoy visiting places on days when it’s not busy — just another perk to retirement!

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Dave says:
    09/10/2020 at 1:44 pm

    I would love to see this museum! You hear about “model railroad” museums all the time, but way fewer of the real McCoy. Plus, a chance for my wife to do a little gambling on the side 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Ingmar Ellenberger says:
    09/10/2020 at 10:40 am

    Love your Weekly Outing series. I get to vicariously live retired through you 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  9. floridaborne says:
    09/10/2020 at 8:37 am

    Thank you for the armchair travel to a great museum.

    One of my dreams is to take a train ride through the mountains and a train ride in Alaska. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of thing you can do if you’re retired and have a good retirement fund. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Jacqui Murray says:
    09/10/2020 at 7:47 am

    That looks wonderful. Trains–great historic topic.

    Liked by 1 person

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