Steam & Excursion > A Sad Record Of Carnage On One Terrible Night At This Railroad!

While any trip through a scrap yard in the late 1930's was likely to produce some sobering views of steam locomotives about to meet their final end at from the hot flame of a cutting torch, the view on a sunny day in this scrap yard in San Francisco in 1939 showed an even more horrible scene.

Gathered in one corner of the scrap yard was quite a number of aging narrow gauge steam locomotives that all shared the same fate on the same railroad.  For it was here that had been gathered the motive power of the Eureka-Nevada railroad that had all perished on night in 1927 in the E-N roundhouse at Eureka, Nevada.  After spending more than a decade following the fire in the Eureka yards, they were finally all rounded up and brought in for scrapping in 1938 when the railroad itself succored to abandonment.

The only locomotive shown here that was not one of the E-n engines caught in that fateful fire is the diamond stack engine at the far right.  That engine was brought in from Battle Mountain, Nevada where she had been the #1 on the famed Nevada Central line that ran from  Battle Mountain to  Austin.

Soon the memories of that fateful night in 1927 when fire tore through the Eureka-Nevada roundhouse would be erased for all time as the burned hulks of these engines would be here no more to remind us.

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/19 03:42 by LoggerHogger.

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Never have I seen a line of steam locomotives about to be scrapped look so horrible . Sad sight. Thanks Martin.

Boy, it just breaks your heart, doesn't it?

Ed Gibson

Wonder how many of these engines in their reincarnation became waterborne naval vessels to fight the enemy in WWII?  
If so, I guess "for every bad incident, something good may come of it".  In this case, it no doubt was a sad day in the lives of many railroaders.