Nostalgia & History > At 5mph It"s a Long Trip to Shafter:Last of the NNRy Ore Trains

Summer of 1999 and time has run out on the BHP Nevada ore trains, the heir to the Nevada Northern Railway.The trip to Shafter takes three days from the Concentrator at Ruth.The first day is to the Ore Yard at East Ely, second day Currie and the third and final day Shafter on the UP for interchange.The first scene is at Currie waiting on the crew. The second image is the loads in the Goshute Valley with Currie in the background. The last picture is the empties at Currie preparing to depart.The end is just a week away.Bill Webb

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Pic #2 is a beauty!

Great and rare photos.  Here is how Currie looked on 3-28-15 in this view looking north.
Steve B.

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Bill those are incredible and very timely shots. When Q-R put in the new concentrator and the line was extended we all
thought it would happen again. So much for hope, glad you were there to get those shots.

Out

Great material! Is the Currie depot and motorcar sheds along with historic buildings registered as Historic places? What about property ownership?

Outstanding photos.

​If I understand correctly, this line is still connected at Shafter, but OOS?

 

If I am not mistaken, both of these units would eventually end up on the Rock & Rail in Colo and then the CK&P abit farther east in Colo than the R&R.  Ben

Soo...in one of those cases of Never Leave Home Without A Camera, my first summer living out here was 1999, and while paying a visit to me my brother and I made a day trip down to Ely.  One of the volunteers on the train had worked for BHP Nevada Rail, he said their very last train was running north that day.  My brother and I encountered it late that afternoon at Currie...one of the blue and yellow SDs and two empty flatcars...but did not have a camera.  Bummer.

When BHP Nevada Rail shut down they broke a contract they had with the museum, and as settlement they gave their equipment to the museum.  The museum sold three of the SD-9s to Colorado, Kansas & Pacific, and my wife and I ventured out to Shafter one very cold day in late 2000 or early 2001 to get a few pictures of them sitting in the interchange tracks, waiting to be picked up for shipment east.  This would be the second to last movement over the entire Ely to Shafter line, the last came a year or two later when the museum ran one of their diesels up to Shafter to get two ex-DOD MRS-1s that had been donated to them. 

As per period news reports, BHP ran two trains a week over the line.  The first would go Ely to Currie on Monday, Currie-Shafter-Currie on Tuesday, then Currie-Ely Wednesday.  The second train would go Ely to Currie Thursdays, Currie-Shafter-Currie on Fridays, and then a second crew would meet the train in Currie that afternoon to take the empty cars on into Ely.  A year or two before the end BHP was talking about building a truck scale at the concentrator and trucking their ore from Ely to a reload to be established someplace on the LA&SL in Utah, but shut down before that could come to pass.

I'll address the present situation at Shafter next.  

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV 

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NDOT paved the Highway 93 crossing at Currie over in the middle 2000s, effectively severing the line.  A short time later Congress included in a law provisions transfering ownership of the right-of-way wherever it crosses public land, which is the majority of the line, to the museum and the city of Ely.  Around 2009 or so the museum and the city struck a deal with S&S Shortline Leasing, who brought in a few pieces of track equipment to remove brush and tamp and regulate the Shafter-Currie line...but they didn't do much else beyond that.  The Northern Nevada Railroad, who started rebuilding the line in the middle 1990s, replaced many of the ties and dumped some ballast, but the entire mainline is still laid with the original 60-pound steel from when they built the NN, hence BHP's 5-10 mph operating speeds.  S&S brought in an ex-DRGW caboose and a 45-ton GE of extensive history, including LP&N, Chelatchie Prairie, Oregon Pacific, and Port of Tillamook Bay.  Their only business to date is car storage, they had several hundred covered hoppers on the line for a few months around 2010, then nothing for about three years.  In early fall 2013 a few tank cars showed up, the number has slowly increased to the point they presently have about 200 or so tank cars and covered hoppers, all at Shafter.  Nothing's been on the line south of that since about 2010.

Three pictures...one looking south from Shafter in October 2014, another one at Shafter a few years later, and finally one of the mainline in September 2013, taken from one of the public crossings south of Shafter- maybe Dolly Varden.  I should note the caboose left the property about two years ago, went to someplace in California, so don't go to Shafter expecting to find it there anymore.  The 45-tonner is, however, still there. 

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

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I believe that 45 tonner is the one that Dick Samuels tuned up and got ready to go to the POTB,
which ended up having a minor track problem.

Out

Thanks everyone, for this fascinating post!

Lee Hower - Sacramento

Correct on the 45-tonner, note I included Oregon Pacific in its history...however, POTB bought it from OPRR in 2008, after the storm damage, with an eye towards using it to help out with the planned storm repairs and other tasks.  They sold it after firmly deciding not to effect repairs. 

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Thank you JDLX(Jeff) for the information.You explained the rest of the story.Bill Webb

spider1319 Wrote:
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> Thank you JDLX(Jeff) for the information.You
> explained the rest of the story.Bill Webb

Jeff Moore knows Nevada.