Steam & Excursion > All The Steam Power Pulled Out Ready For A Call That Won't Come!

Most railroads thrived in years that WW-II raged on. However a few such lines did not make it quite till the war years caused the increase in traffic. Here is one such line.

Started in 1906 the 169-mile long Tonopah & Tidewater RR ran between Beatty, Nevada and Ludlow, California to haul both passengers and mining products such as Borax. However, like most mining often does the mines along the line had finally played out by 1940. Thus even the advent of WW-II he next year could do little to keep the T&T alive.

Seen here in April 1943 we see T&T 1907 Baldwin-built 2-8-0's #8, #7, and #10 after they were pulled out of there births at Ludlow. The scrappers started pulling the line at Beatty in 1942 and they have now reached the outskirts of Ludlow. Soon they will be lifting the track in the yard.

Fortunately T&T #7 will be sold to the Tonopah & Goldfield for a few more yeas service while #8 and #10 will go to Morrison Knudsen to serve there for their last years.

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/17 04:37 by LoggerHogger.

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Thanks Martin,

Where in Ludlow was the engine house?

Tim Costello

tgcostello Wrote:
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> Thanks Martin,
>
> Where in Ludlow was the engine house?
>
> Tim Costello

Many years a go I poked around in Ludlow and discovered the foundations of the engine house as well as the enginehouse pits. I seem to remember that they were on the west side of "town". There is a map of Ludlow in Myrick's RR's of Nevada book, that I went by.

It pretty much was the West side of town. The line looped around the facility to interchange with the Santa Fe,
the grade for the loop can still be seen, South side of the Interstate, a mile or so before the ramp into downtown
Ludlow.

Out

Pits from the roundhouse are still plainly visible in Google satellite imagery:

https://goo.gl/maps/xkkowzuHnfM2

A close reading of Phil Serpico's fine book on the T&T shows it was not the mines playing out that killed the road. Pacific Coast Borax built the T&T to support its borax mining operations in Death Valley and vicinity, but as the 1920s drew to a close the company shifted all of its production to the deposits around Boron, which could be worked much more cheaply than those supporting the T&T. The move left vast deposits of borax (Serpico states some speculate remaining reserves in the area at 100 million or more tons) unexploited in Death Valley. The T&T did continue on for another decade after the borax traffic ceased, partially due to the role it played in transporting tourists to Death Valley as PCB started its transformation into the tourist destination it has become, though the railroad did haul some remaining mining traffic, mostly Talc. Unfortunately, the T&T lost money at an alarming rate, and by the late 1930s aging equipment and declining track conditions and no real prospects for any new substantial traffic finally forced PCB to pull the plug on the railroad.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

I believe T&T rail and some boxcars went to the USN Ammo Dump in Seal beach 1942.