The quintessential Nevada Northern Freight Train is a hopper train to carry copper ore. This line made its living for most of the 20th century, picking up raw ore from the mines near Keystone and carrying it to the smelting operations near McGill. With a desert snow squall moving in from the west, this photo depicts a train of empty hoppers, hauled by a beefy Consolidation, headed out of Ely toward the mines to pick up a load. It is unfortunate, that with all of the FRA restrictions these days, the historic hopper cars you see here are currently not allowed to climb the hill to Keystone. They are allowed only as far as the Yard Limit, about 200 yards to the right in this photo. Still, the fill between the East Ely Yard and the Lackawanna Crossing is one of the best spots on the line for photography, in good weather as well as bad. On this particular day, we had both, with bright sunshine one minute and snow squalls the next. The clock on my camera tells me that this shot was taken just about 30 minutes after this one.
