Along with its restored
19th Century railroad cars and locomotives,
the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City has
added an exhibit that depicts Nevada railroads during
the 20th Century. It is an HO-scale (1/87th
actual size) model railroad that volunteers and staff
are creating at NSRM. Work began in mid-2006 and
continues.
The exhibit is equipped
with locomotive and railroad-car models donated by the
family of the late Kel Aiken, a long-time member of the
Friends of the Nevada State Railroad Museum. Mr. Aiken’s
hundreds of models include passenger and freight cars
and steam and diesel-electric locomotives of the
Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Western Pacific
railroads. Using these models, the museum can
demonstrate railroad operations in Nevada as they were
during any selected decade throughout the past hundred
years.
The Museum already had
more than a dozen highly detailed, HO-scale models of
Virginia & Truckee, Southern Pacific, and Nevada Copper
Belt equipment. After being stored for up to twenty
years, these items have been incorporated into the
model-railroad exhibit project. Among them is a model of
V&T locomotive No. 25. After identifying the real No. 25
with its model, visitors can use the models to compare
No. 25 with later locomotives. “This kind of comparison
is a helpful way to put our V&T equipment into
historical context,” said Peter Barton, Director of NSRM
and Acting Administrator of the Division of Museums,
Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs.
Volunteers operate
trains on weekends and group-tour days. At other times a
push-button enables visitors to operate a train on
demand.
The Aiken models enable
the museum to depict the changing traffic of 20th
Century Nevada railroads, from ore, livestock or
ice-cooled California produce to 1990s container
shipments, with locomotives to match. In addition to
railroad equipment, the Aiken family donation also
included raw materials for scenery-making and a wide
variety of structure and vehicle models, which also date
from a range of decades.
A twelve-foot-long
exhibit case on an adjoining wall supplements the model
railroad through rotating exhibition of representations
of 1,000-foot-long trains. Exhibit labels explain not
only evolving railroad technology, but also the changing
economy of Nevada as illustrated by what the State’s
railroads have transported at varied periods in the
past.
The objective of scenery
and structures in the NSRM model railroad exhibit is to
suggest, through appropriate natural and
built-environment features, a generic Nevada scene.
Along with locomotives and railroad cars, a variety of
detail elements can be changed to suggest different eras
of Nevada history. Depending on the era being depicted,
road vehicles, signs, mine structures and locomotive
servicing facilities can be exchanged; outhouses and an
automotive service station can be included or removed;
and the depot (left foreground) can be active, vacant,
or shown as a non-railroad commercial building. Except
for the depot, everything in this picture was donated to
NSRM by the Kel Aiken family.
Model structures not
only serve as a backdrop for model locomotives and cars,
but add to the Nevada context of the entire exhibit. For
example; mine, ranch and stockyard structures – with
adjacent railroad loading spurs – indicate types of
railroad freight traffic that originated in Nevada.
