Thursday, April 15, 2004 | 8:25 a.m.
Rojane Hall rested her small hand on the window ledge.
Her nose pressed against the glass, she watched Boulder City businesses disappear behind her, then stared at the mountains in the distance.
The conductor introduced himself over the intercom and the 3-year-old turned around, wide-eyed. This was her first train ride.
For her great-grandmother, the 3 1/2 mile stretch of historic track in Boulder City was as much family history as it was a Saturday outing.
"My uncle and my father worked on trains in Texas," said Hall's great-grandmother, Janice Whitlock, a Boulder City resident, whose daughter Alvia Blankenship was also on the train. "My uncle was a Pullman car porter. My father was a Redcap. So I knew everybody at the Southern Railway."
Glancing out the window, Whitlock said, "I love trains. This is the only time I can get some nostalgia."
Trains have that allure. They're historic, luxurious, romantic and poetic. They helped develop the West and began moving Americans out of the horse-and- buggy era. Hollywood has created dramas on railway lines, and songs of riding the rails are plentiful.
"People are fascinated by the sheer size and mechanical power of trains," said Greg Corbin, director of the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Boulder City. "Whether they had a small train as a child or sitting at the railroad crossing watching trains go by, people have a fascination with this.
"We get hundreds of people who stop in our shop. They always want to tell you a story of their relationship to a train at some point in their life. They tell us these stories. You don't even have to ask."
The view from a train, Corbin said, "It's a lot different than the view from the highway. The landscape takes on a whole different appearance from a train. You notice features in mountains better. Highways tend to be more sterile."
The roughly 600 people who turned out in shifts Saturday at the State Railroad Museum in Boulder City to ride the Nevada Southern Railway could attest to that.
Looking around the busy depot off Yucca Street and Boulder Highway, Corbin said, "This is the way we want it."
Saving trains
Railroads were critical to the early development of Nevada. The Salt Lake City to Los Angeles railway built in 1905 established Las Vegas as a railroad town. The Northern Nevada Railway was completed the following year.
In 1980 on the 30th anniversary of the last run of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City opened. Three years later the Nevada Northern Railway Museum in Ely opened. The Ely site is known for its Ghost Train of Old Ely. Trains are on display and run excursions from May to December. Last season was its biggest yet. In June operations of the excursions will extend to six days a week.
The Boulder City project originated in the 1980s when a portion of the United Pacific Boulder Branch Line was donated to the state. The shop to restore the trains was built in 1996.
Corbin relocated to Southern Nevada six years ago from the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City to get the Southern Nevada Railway on track. In March the railway offered the first of its monthly rail rides in the Pullman cars dating to the early 1900s.
With the help of 25 museum volunteers and 25 volunteers from the Southern Nevada Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society who help operate the Saturday runs, Corbin sees the Nevada Southern Railway as one more "piece of the pie" for tourists coming to Boulder City to visit Hoover Dam.
There is no museum facility. But the rail line, part of the train yards built in 1931 to shuttle equipment and materials to Hoover Dam during its construction, qualifies for the National Historic Registry, Corbin said.
"There was a lot of action here," he said. "There were trains coming and going. This is where everything came through to the Hoover Dam. The railroad played an incredible role with Hoover Dam."
After 70 years, the railroad tracks remain stable.
"The hot desert climate of Southern Nevada has preserved this railroad so well," Corbin said.
The trains aren't so cooperative. Because the trains are mechanical and old, volunteers constantly work to stay on top of any malfunctions.
"The equipment is old. Regardless of how much money is put into them. We're always chasing an air leak, oil leak," Corbin said. "We try to work out the kinks in these kinds of runs."
A yellow diesel and electric locomotive No. 844 was donated to the state of Nevada in 1989. Restoration on the car began last summer and cost $150,000.
"This is the first time we've used her," Corbin said. "She was just rolled out of the shop. We kept it in its old Union Pacific appearance.
"It's historically significant because it's the diesel electric cousin to the Union Pacific's steam 844. We get a lot of people coming here to see this locomotive because they know the relationship between the two."
Love of the rails
Jim Potvin, the lead engineer of the Nevada Southern Railway rides, stood in the locomotive dressed in denim overalls and a stars-and-stripes baseball cap Saturday.
"I love this," Potvin said. "It's in my blood. I get goose bumps. I'm a railroader. My whole family is railroaders. My dad was a master machinest on the Milwaukee Road. I took my apprenticeship on the Milwaukee Road.
Potvin said he isn't sure what exactly what creates such a fascination of trains among the general public, but his in his 25-year career has seen the effect that trains have.
"People, all the way to little children, all the way up, people will stop to look at a train. When I was going across Southern Nebraska, people would stop and watch the trains on people.
"In Crawford (Neb.), they have places where people can stop and park to watch trains."
At the Railroad Pass Casino, where the Nevada Southern Railway stops and prepares to head back to the depot, passenger 5-year-old Parker Kolberg, wearing a gray-and-white striped engineer's cap, was asking about the snakes, bighorn sheep and antelope ground squirrels.
"Isn't that pretty when all the desert flowers are blooming," said his father Christian Kolberg while pointing to blooming beavertail cactus.
Looking up, Kolberg said, "He likes trains. We've ridden the Ely train. This Christmas we rode from Chicago to Maple Grove (Minn.).
"We came early to take photographs with engine."
On Saturday Parker's brother Justin, 2, mom Lara, and an aunt and uncle from Nebraska were on the train.
"Until about two weeks ago, I didn't even know this was here," Kolberg said. "It's very nicely done. It will be interesting to see how it grows."
For now the Nevada Southern Railway has two primary locomotives, a backup locomotive, a breezy open-air car, a car catering to disable passengers, a generator car that runs the air conditioning, fans and lights, and refurbished passenger cars.
On the property there is a steam locomotive dating to 1905, a davenport locomotive that operated at the dame site during construction of the dam, and a post office car where mail was sorted.
Corbin wants to refurbish some of the trains and put them on display next to the depot. Daily year-round train rides are expected to begin in 2005. One locomotive is used for training volunteers.
Volunteers with expertise, such as Bob Freedman, put in as much as 100 hours a month.
"It's more of a railroad camaraderie than it is a place to go to work," Freedman said.
In the shop across the street, a luxury dining car built in 1949 is being refurbished. The car has a full kitchen and will be used for private receptions and special events. Corbin said the museum already has requests for meetings and weddings.
Now that the train is operational, funds will be directed toward constructing a museum facility.
At the depot the train is squealing down the tracks and passengers on the last ride of the day are waving goodbye to those standing in the parking lot.
Babies in bonnets, and kids in conductor caps rattling off their knowledge. Grandparents finished taking photos of boarding and unboarding.
For members of the Southern Nevada Chapter of the National Railway Society, it couldn't be more thrilling.
"For some of the kids, this is their first ride on the train," said Tony Bond, a Railway Society member who narrated portions of Saturday's rides. "We are train fans, We like trains. We want to preserve our trains."
Looking at the blue-and-silver cars, Bond said, "As a kid I would stand by the tracks and watch the trains go by. There's something neat about it. They know where they're going."
archive
