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photos courtesy Nevada State Railroad Museum
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photos courtesy Nevada State Railroad Museum
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photos courtesy Nevada State Railroad Museum
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photos courtesy Nevada State Railroad Museum
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photos courtesy Nevada State Railroad Museum
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photos courtesy Nevada State Railroad Museum
Story by TREVOR PANCOUST photos courtesy Nevada State Railroad Museum
The renowned Glenbrook gets ready to steam down the track again, this time at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City
When the silver rush began with the famous Comstock Lode in Nevada a century-and-a-half ago, trucks were still decades away from being invented.
Railroads ruled the day in that 1870s “Bonanza” era, but the giant iron horses used for cross-country trips were too big to haul out logs, supplies and other heavy cargo from the mountains of Western Nevada and Eastern California.
The solution was a smaller, but still-mighty steam locomotive, and one of the most famous of these engines has been brought back to life again at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City in a restoration 89 years in the making.
Introducing the Glenbrook
When logs cut from the forests around Lake Tahoe needed to be transported to build the faraway silver mines in the Comstock near Virginia City, these relatively small, but extremely powerful workhorses proved their mettle. They ran on narrower-gauge tracks, which meant they could haul goods through steep mountain passes and operate at a much lower cost than any standard train could. These tough, narrow-gauge trains became instrumental in building the Wild West.
One of the best known survivors is the Glenbrook, built in 1875 by Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia. It was so-named for hauling logs uphill from Glenbrook, Nevada on the East side of Lake Tahoe, to an adjacent mountain pass for the Carson & Lake Tahoe Lumber & Fluming Company. Upon reaching the summit, the logs were fired down the other side of the mountain in a flume leading to Carson City below, and then shipped by standard rail to the Comstock for constructing the silver mines.
But it’s the story of the Glenbrook’s afterlife that has endeared it to rail fans, and with its recent restoration, the Glenbrook is expected to become a major attraction in Carson City.
A Long Road Back to Life
Following the decline of silver mining in the Comstock, the locomotive found a new calling, pulling residents and tourists between Truckee and Tahoe City on the California side of Lake Tahoe, until the 51-year-old engine was finally decommissioned in 1925.
It changed hands several times, and was finally donated to the Nevada State Museum in 1943, making it the first railroad artifact to belong to the State. It sat for years outside the Nevada State Museum until 1982, when the newly opened Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City took it over. It planned a restorative overhaul that just never seemed to get started.
After a wait of more than 25 years, a donation from the E. L. Wiegand Foundation of Reno finally kick-started the wholesale restoration of the locomotive in 2009, under the museum’s Railroad Restoration Shop Supervisor Chris DeWitt.
The rebuild was extensive and took almost five years.
A key make-or-break test came at sunup one morning last November, when DeWitt and his team started loading wood into the firebox of the Glenbrook for a crucial steam boiler test.
It took only a couple of hours to heat up, and the boiler quickly provided the 130 lbs of steam pressure needed to start up the engine and earn its Nevada State boiler tag, allowing it to operate for the first time in 89 years.
Ready for Its Close-Up
The Glenbrook is alive and well once again, joining the famous Inyo at the railroad museum. The Nevada State Railroad Museum is the only one to possess two restored, and operable, wood-burning 1875 locomotives in the same place.
A standard gauge steam locomotive also built in 1875, the Inyo was used by Hollywood in TV shows like Wild Wild West in 1965. The last motion picture in which it was filmed was McLintock! in 1962. Inyo was later restored in 1983, and still makes an annual Independence Day run at the museum each July 4th.
The Nevada State Railway Museum in Nevada’s capital Carson City plans to have the Glenbrook, and a new narrow gauge track for it, ready for the public to see this summer. For more, visit the museum’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/NSRMCC, or call 775-687-6953.