Carson & Tahoe Lumber & Fluming #1: Glenbrook. Mostly hidden from public view, in the shops of the Nevada State Railroad Museum, a little-known narrow gauge mogul is approaching the end of a very long restoration process. Carson & Tahoe Lumber & Fluming Company #1 was known as "Glenbrook", when she plied the 3-foot gauge rails outside Carson City in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a log-hauler. Built in 1875 by Baldwin in Philadelphia, this little wood-burner was just a few builder's numbers away from Dan Markoff's famous Eureka. When her home railroad went standard gauge in 1926, the Bliss family, who had owned her since the beginning, put her away for safe-keeping. After briefly selling her to the Nevada County, they bought the locomotive back and donated her to the Nevada State Railroad Museum. There, she sat as an outdoor display for many years.
In the early 1980s, the museum began efforts to restore her, but a number of problems intervened and many years passed. Recently, the museum has obtained grants to finish the job and the work has resumed in earnest. The tender, cab and stack are already complete and the focus now is on the boiler. Rather than replace the entire boiler with a new one, the plan now is to replace the bad sections only. Unlike most restoration projects, the firebox on this little gal seems to be in fine shape. It is the boiler barrel that must be replaced. I shot this image in September of 2012, during a special tour given by Museum Curator of History, Wendell Huffman. You can see that the boiler barrel and smokebox have indeed been replaced, with the removed sections partially visible on the right. Clearly, the running gear is also largely complete. The museum is aiming to have her operable by sometime in 2014, and the loop track on the site has already been dual-gauged to accommodate her. She will be FRA Form 4-compliant, so travel away from the museum will be at least theoretically possible. Who knows? As Dan Markoff has stated in on-line forums, perhaps Eureka will finally have a playmate.
