The Virginia and Truckee: Silver Trains and Hollywood
Near Incline Village, Nevada
The Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City preserves the rolling stock of one of the most storied short lines in American history: the Virginia and Truckee Railroad.
The Virginia and Truckee was built in eighteen sixty-nine to haul silver ore from the Comstock Lode mines at Virginia City down to mills and connections at Carson City and Reno. At its peak it was reportedly the richest short-line railroad in the United States, running day and night through the Sierra Nevada foothills carrying bullion that funded the growth of San Francisco.
When the ore ran out, Hollywood kept the locomotives alive. Studios bought up the old V and T equipment because the Victorian-era trains looked exactly right on screen. The museum eventually acquired many of those same cars back from the studios. Among the sixty-five locomotives and cars on display, thirty-one once ran on the V and T, including the eighteen seventy-five Inyo locomotive, one of the oldest operating steam engines in the United States.
