Ely, NV Part One: In Which I Drive a Train

Last Sunday, we celebrated my 50th birthday. Because it was a bit of a milestone, we did something a little more exciting than usual: we went to Ely, NV to drive a steam locomotive at the Northern Nevada Railway Museum. It was quite the adventure for me, so I wanted to tell you all about it.

(This week’s post may be a little longer than usual, so please bear with me.)

We had actually originally planned to make this trip last year for my birthday, but a bevy of expensive house repairs and problems with my wife’s health forced us to push it back. That was okay; it felt like a big event like this should be saved for a milestone birthday anyway. And last August, the railway museum offered a discount on tickets, so we were able to save a little money by waiting. And we got to schedule it for right on my birthday, which was great.

I generally suffer from pre-trip anxiety no matter where we go. This trip, it hit me a bit harder than usual. I was worried that I didn’t have all the right clothing for the trip; the railway museum specified that everyone in the locomotive needed to be wearing 100% cotton, to keep anything from melting in case of fire. I didn’t have a 100% cotton jacket, but we were able to find one the day before the trip. I also had to take a test on the railway museum rules, and while I felt pretty confident about my answers—it was an open book test that I took before we left—it was still a potential stumbling block I had to get past.

The view on the drive up.

Finally, we were concerned about the weather; Ely is at an altitude of 6500 feet. The weather reports predicted snow on the day we were driving up and driving home. I haven’t had to drive in snow since I moved away from Ohio almost 20 years ago. Fortunately, when I spoke to the folks in Ely, they said that they expected to get less than an inch, and that it should be all gone by the time we arrived. So we felt okay.

A rest stop on the way up. Note the lack of snow on the ground.

The drive up went mainly without incident. We were stopped for a while due to a truck on fire on the side of the road, and that really freaked me out. And when we got into the mountains near Ely, a deer ran across the road right in front of us. But we arrived safely, and our room at the La Quinta was nice. And we had a nice view of the mountains around us.

We also had a scary moment when we tried to visit Garnet Hill, a local attraction/state park where my wife hoped to find some garnets. The park is only accessible via a very narrow dirt road up the hill, and weather had washed out some parts of it. At one point, the car got stuck for a few seconds. Not for very long, but enough to scare us. Shortly after, we determined that our car wasn’t going to be able to negotiate the really uneven road, so we backed down to a point where we were able to turn around.

We had an easier time getting to the Ward Charcoal Ovens state park. These ovens were used to turn literally forests of lumber into charcoal to be used by foundries to smelt ore. I had no idea that this was how charcoal was produced, or how these foundries worked. They were fascinating structures in their own right, but also a monument to environmental destruction.

We also visited Ely Renaissance Village, a collection of cabins, each individually decorated to represent the various cultures that immigrated to and settled in Ely. We saw a miner’s cabin, the English House, the Spanish House, the Slavic House, the Irish House, the French House, the Greek House, the Italian House, and the Asian House. 

Dolls

Another doll

Life-sized miner doll

Each house gave us historical perspective and a view on immigrant life during the last couple of centuries. I found the whole thing very fascinating, so much so that I didn’t actually take any photos. Fortunately, my wife did. We were particularly interested in the stoves and ovens in every cabin, since each one was different. We also enjoyed looking at vintage appliances like the washing machines. In today’s divisive climate—and in a town like Ely, where the Mexican restaurant we had dinner on our first night has separate “American” and “Mexican” menus—it was nice to see a celebration of the diversity of cultures that made the town what it is.

Speaking of what kind of a town Ely is, here is my favorite headline from the local newspaper.

Saturday night, we went out for my birthday dinner at the Cell Block Steakhouse in the Jailhouse Casino. I talk about this in a separate post here.

I had trouble sleeping on Saturday night. Not only was I anxious about driving the train, we were also concerned about reports that it would start snowing Saturday afternoon and continue for the next few days. I was pretty nervous about having to drive down from the mountains in the snow, particularly if it had been accumulating overnight. Our muddy scare trying to get to Garnet Hill didn’t do much to help.

When we woke up Sunday morning, on my birthday, it was raining quite a bit. Fortunately, it let up before we headed out to the Nevada Northern Railway Museum. And despite all my anxiety, everything went fine there. First, I turned in my test on their rules. I got a few questions wrong, but I was told that I did much better than most of the people who took it. That restored some of my confidence.

The passenger train arriving before I got to drive; I just drove the locomotive with no cars.

While looking for the engineer of the train I would be driving, we visited the maintenance shop. There, we met a genuine celebrity!

I have been following the museum on Instagram for some time, so I was very familiar with Dirt, the shop cat, who had grown up amongst the trains. I had hoped we would get to see him, and I was not disappointed!

We then found the engine I would be driving: Engine 40, a steam locomotive built in 1910. We also met John Tyson, the engineer who would be showing me how to drive this beautiful machine. My wife rode with us on the coal tender, and we were also accompanied by a young man working as the fireman on the engine. (I’m afraid I don’t recall his name; I was pretty focused on learning how to operate the locomotive.)

Getting ready to drive!

Because I was focused on driving the train, and my wife was standing between the tender and the engine as we moved, holding onto the handholds with gloves, we weren’t able to take a lot of photos on the ride. And I don’t care. I don’t need a lot of photos, because this is an experience I will never forget.

John drove us out of the train yard, and then he let me take the controls, showing me how to use the throttle and brake to control the speed, and how to blow the whistle and what signals to blow. Then, with me operating the train under his direction and supervision, we headed out on our journey. We went out about 7.5 miles, I think, through two tunnels and uphill to a wye. There, John turned us around, and I took the controls again. Because we were going downhill, I had to use the brakes a lot more to manage our speed. 

The long, horizontal bar is the throttle. The small brass handle to the right of the three red valves is the engine brake.

I can honestly say that this experience was like nothing I have ever done. Nothing happens instantly on a locomotive, and I had to get used to adjusting the throttle and using the brakes without an immediate result, instead trying to anticipate the effects my actions would cause. I don’t know what I was expecting, but whatever that was, the reality felt completely different. 

It took some time, but by the time we were turned around and heading back to town, I was feeling more like I could handle the brakes. I had to learn to trust my gut and what I was feeling from the engine. Part of the trick was not applying them so hard that the water in the boiler sloshed around too much. It was kind of like pumping the brakes, working the brake handle back and forth (“ping-ponging,” John called it), except instead of feeling the train slow as soon as I tapped the brakes, I had to know to push the lever just until I felt the slightest sense that the locomotive was beginning to slow. As soon as I felt that, I let go, with faith that the effect would continue even without me holding the brake lever down. Same with changing the throttle setting and trusting that it would effect the changes I wanted without seeing it happen immediately.

John said that he needed to be able to hear the locomotive to tell how it was running. If I learned one thing for this experience—and I definitely learned more than one thing—it was how different an experience driving this locomotive was to anything I had ever done before. Deprived of so many of the things I was used to taking for granted, like power steering, power brakes, being able to control a vehicle with a minimum of physical effort, and feeling instant responses to the controls, was really eye-opening. I don’t know what it’s like to drive a diesel locomotive (although I could drive one of those, too, at NNRM) but I have a lot of respect for steam engineers. They really need to understand their engines inside and out in order to properly control them.

Driving the locomotive was also a major physical workout. The brake was pretty easy to operate, but the throttle had a tremendous amount of pressure behind it. If I wanted to increase it a little, I had to really fight to keep it under control and not go too far. If I wanted to decrease the throttle, I had to really shove it forwards, with it pushing back against me. Even the cord to blow the whistle took a lot of effort to pull. I drove that engine for about 90-120 minutes, and it wore me out.

Looking into the coal tender

I really appreciate that we had a fireman along to keep the boiler going. If, in addition to everything else I was doing, I’d had to shovel coal into the firebox as frequently as he did—and not little charcoal briquettes, either; these were giant chunks—I would have lost it. I told my wife that when we got home, I wanted to watch my new copy of Buster Keaton’s The General, now that I could really appreciate what it took to drive a steam train.

I probably would have felt much more worn out if I hadn’t been feeling the rush of excitement from driving a steam locomotive. After the ride, my wife told me she imagined herself in the Old West, riding shotgun on a train hauling a valuable shipment. I have to admit, in those moments when I couldn’t see cars on the road alongside the track, I lost myself in the experience as well. It was hard work and took a lot of attention, but not so much that I couldn’t appreciate what I was doing, admire the scenery, and have fun.

My dad was a huge rail fan when I was growing up. Memories of childhood vacations are filled with riding tourist trains, even putting our car on Amtrak’s auto train. We also spent hours waiting by the side of train tracks, with my dad setting up a camera to take photos of a train as it went past. My childhood home was filled with books and movies about trains, and railroad memorabilia. My dad even had a pair of railroad signal lamps hung outside his study. 

I’m not as passionate about trains as he was, but what love I have of them came from him. I wish he had been able to come along with me on this experience. Part of me likes to think that he did. If nothing else, I was wearing a shirt that my mom had embroidered for him years ago.

After the ride, I received a certificate from the museum, and my wife and I purchased some Dirt-related souvenirs. Then we talked about our afternoon plans. 

Gizmo tells us what he thinks of the Dirt shirt

The weather reports were still forecasting constant snowfall over the next few days, beginning at around five that evening. We decided that, even though we had paid for one more night at the hotel, it was worth it for our peace of mind to leave right away, before the snow hit. The money was spent either way, but if we stayed, we’d also have to pay for a mediocre dinner in town, and probably have a really stressful drive home.

We went to the town McDonalds for lunch, and while we were waiting at the drive thru, it began snowing. We immediately went back to the hotel, ate, packed quickly and checked out, hoping to be well on our way before the snow began to accumulate. After about an hour, we were out from under the snow, and the rest of the drive was uneventful. And, of course, it doesn’t seem like it has snowed in Ely since that afternoon. I’m still glad we left; we didn’t know it would stop snowing, and we were happy to be home earlier and have an extra day to relax in our own house with our cats.

I recommend the Nevada Northern Railway Museum Be the Engineer experience for anyone who loves trains and wants to do something a step beyond just riding one. You can also drive a diesel locomotive, which is a little less expensive, but if I was going to drive a locomotive, I knew it had to be steam for me. You can also drive a locomotive pulling a freight train, but that’s a lot more expensive, and probably a lot harder and more stressful. I’m glad I chose the experience that I did, and will treasure these memories always.

That’s about it for this post, but please check out my post about my birthday dinner, also up today. And if all goes according to plan, my next post in two weeks will be about the latest book in Ron Randall’s Trekker series. Hope to see you in two weeks!