Another glorious Comstock morning. A V&T freight approaches the mining town of Gold Hill, NV on a cold winter morning in February. Although just a shadow of its former self, the town of Gold Hill has historically been the center of activity on what's known as the "Comstock Lode", which is a massive deposit of Silver Ore. Since the mid-1800s, there have been numerous silver and gold rushes in this area, and whole towns, such as Gold Hill often cropped up in the middle of nowhere. These towns featured mines, and ore processing facilities as well as settlements to house the miners and workers who made each of these boom-times happen. The fabled Virginia & Truckee Railway was another outgrowth of the Comstock phenomenon. The mines and other industries needed a means to get their product out of the remote hills and off to market and the railroad was that means. Although the V&T did haul passengers, their bread and butter was the mining business. When the boom finally went bust (almost) for good in the late 1930s, so did the V&T's Virginia City Line. By 1941, the tracks were gone.
Oddly enough, the Comstock Region has experienced another resurgence of mining activity in recent years. With the financial melt-down in 2008, the price of gold and other precious metals skyrocketed. With newer, more efficient mining and processing techniques available, the idea of re-mining a region previously thought to be tapped-out suddenly seemed profitable again. Equally oddly, it was right about that time that the State of Nevada elected to put back the V&T Virginia City Line....albeit as a tourist-hauler this time. The photo here is from a 2014 Lerro Productions Photo Charter.
Landscape photography is difficult due to the challenge of combining good light and good scenery. Good railroad photography enters another level of complexity since it requires the first two while there is a train in view.
