AT THE THROTTLE: WHERE DO ALL THOSE RIDERS COME FROM? ELY, NV -- We're gearing up. Opening Day is a week away and there are hundreds if not thousands of tasks that need to be done in the next week. And our Opening Weekend is also White Pine Weekend. The museum is offering adult residents of White Pine County half price tickets that weekend and better yet, kids get to ride FREE, when accompanied by an adult family member. This is our way of thanking the community for their support. But for the trains to run there is lots of work to be done in the next week. Right now, locomotive 40 has its third driver set, setting on the machine shop floor, one main rod is off locomotive 93, locomotive 105 has a cracked cylinder head and that's just the big jobs. The interior of the coaches need cleaning or as one volunteer said, “They need to be GI'd.” The new brochures need to be distributed, new tickets printed, a new walking tour brochure needs to be done and the gift shop needs to be restocked. Plus there are also hundreds of little tasks that all need doing. Every one these jobs needs to completed in preparation for our visitors and we are expecting thousands of visitors this year. Last year 14,742 people rode our trains. This was our largest year ever and it was an increase of 13% over the previous year. And let us not forget, last year was when gas hit more than $3.00 a gallon and my anxiety level shot up at the same rate. 2006 was more than a record breaking year for us; it was the twelfth year in a row of ridership increases. Since the museum started offering excursion service in 1987, we have carried 131,965 passengers. Not to bad for a railroad that is in the middle of no where. Stats here: [www.elynews.com] Chart here: [www.elynews.com] 2006 was also notable for another reason. We carried passengers in every month of the year. That was a first. Also noteworthy was December. The popularity of our Polar Express trains is changing our season. December was our fourth largest month of the year! We carried 1,919 passengers that month. This pushed our resources to the limit. As the Polar Express trains gets more popular, it is very conceivable, December could become our biggest month of the year. This will present new challenges, such as where do you keep hundreds of people warm while they wait to board a train in a blizzard? Also having some street lights on Avenue A would help. It gets very dark down here at night. So where did all of our riders come from? Well for starters they came from forty-seven states and sixteen foreign counties. If you look at our ridership closer, just over half of our riders come from Nevada, 8,872 riders or just a little over 60% came from the Silver State. And if you start slicing and dicing Nevada's numbers, you find that 60% or 5,292 of our Nevada riders come from southern Nevada. 23% or 2,001 riders come from northern Nevada and the remaining 17% or 1,579 riders are from White Pine County. Our neighboring states contribute a little more than a quarter of our ridership. As you might expect California is the largest, fifteen percent of our riders came from the Golden State. In quick succession, it is Utah with nine percent, Arizona with two percent, Idaho adds two percent to the total with Oregon adding one percent to our ridership. There were a couple of surprises in the numbers. People from Colorado, Washington and Texas travel a long way to ride steam-powered trains. Each state contributed almost one percent a piece to the grand total. Our foreign visitors came from around the planet. The most visitors came from Canada followed by Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Holland, France and New Zealand. We also had visitors from South Africa and Japan. In fact our visitors from Japan rented locomotive 93. It was a little unusual to have an engineer's test done in Japanese; it was also a little tough to grade. This year the emphasis of the museum will be on the weekday excursion trains. Our specialty trains and locomotive rentals are doing excellent. In fact locomotive rentals for April and May are almost sold out. The first wine train is two-thirds sold. Where we are having difficulty is the weekday excursion trains. So this year we will premier a new program at the museum. From Mondays through Thursdays, Kids will ride FREE on excursion trains when accompanied by an adult family member. The thinking behind this offer is very similar to the reason McDonald's builds Playplaces at their restaurants, get the kids and you get the parents. 2007 promises to be an exciting year on the railroad. If our growth continues and I didn't jinx it by this article, by the end of this year we should hit close to 18,000 passengers. It promises to be an interesting journey, come ride the train this year. - Mark Bassett, The Ely Times
It's been 5 years since I was in Ely, and were it not for the Nevada Northern (and the occasional trips to Elko to shoot UP action) I woulda gone insane from the absolute isolation. The place is like a Jurrasic Park for old-time steam operation.:thumbs_up: If any Trainboarders do go, make a point to eat at the Hotel Nevada- the restaurant serves up a wicked good steak & egg breakfast.
Maybe I can get out there this year. I am planning on next year, as I am intent on attending the Advanced RailCamp there in 2008. I fell in love with the Nevada Northern the moment I set foot there.
Some years back, I knew a couple of people from the Pacific NW, who drove all the way down there. To do some volunteer work. Boxcab E50
When I wuz there in '02, the 93 was handling the runs to Ruth, while the 109 (an RS3) took the train out to Incline, above McGill. The 40 was in the shop being rebuilt (500K worth of boiler work to get her federally certified). Alcos in steam and diesel- gotta love it!
It was that way in June, except by then, #40 was just about finished, I got to see her go from needing primer (I helped), to out on test runs to fully in service on the Friday of RailCamp, when she led #93 out to the Wye past Ruth, and back in a doubleheader, what a sight! They rotate the RS2 and RS3 in and out of service. The SD9E is their red-headed step-child, has the ugliest paint-scheme, too. All I ever got to see it used for was air for a jackhammer when our trackwork had gotten too far away from the shop. :shade: I think she had some kind of oil loss.
