Railways of Nevada's Times Past

This caboose and railway passenger car are being restored in Nevada's

Virginia Mountains in a place called 'Virginia City' famous

from 'Bonanza' television show and the Cartright Brothers. Millions

of ounces of gold (and silver) were mined from beneath where these

once-abandoned 'cars' are being worked on, in mines that are

mostly 'played out' but there's still 'gold in them 'thar hills'.

Your critiques and ratings are invited and most welcome. If you rate

harshly or very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Please share your superior knowledge to help improve my

photography.) Thanks! Enjoy! John

John- I like the composition and the unique perspective. I'm not really fond of the sky, the color is a little odd.

The sky color over these mountains, during a 'storm' after the storm has passed through the Sierra (Nevada) to the west, becomes moistureless and 'thin' and even the clouds take on a different shape and texture. The sky color actually is natural, but you have to have been a Nevada resident to recognize that.

 

I understand to a non-Nevadan (or a non-past-Nevadan as I) it must appear somewhat 'strained', but it's not, and it's not a function of manipulation.

 

Thanks for commenting.

 

John

John- How wonderful to have such colorful skies. You are right, being a Mid-Westerner most of my life, I've never seen such a sky. I've seen deep blues that would make you think something ominous was about to happen but never such a shade as this. I must visit someday. :)

I keep waiting for Hoss and Little Joe to walk around the corner. I hope you post more of these. It's a nice reverie. Thanks f/64

Hoss and Little Joe, though ostensibly from 'Virginia City' really kept their Bonanza Ranch at 'Lake Tahoe' which made little sense, since few cattle could graze there, it's so high at 6,200 feet or so.

 

And Virginia City is little higher, though the Reno gateway to it seems to go much higher, and the safer and less vertiginous route there is through Carson (City and County), which is 'longer' but has less steep dropoffs.

 

(Princess Grace has a 'small' stroke in the ultrasteep Principality of Monaco, but lost control of her auto and dropped to her death while driving, and the same would happen if driving to Virginia City from Reno, or if one made just a 'small' mistake, the plunge would be SOOOOooooo great. One could make a lot of OOOOOOOOOooooooohhhhhhh Gooooooosssshhhhhssssses on the way down before hitting something solid.

 

But after going up, then one starts 'down' again part way to Virginia City.

 

I once tracked wild horse corraling by exploiters from a plane using my camera as they built 'corrals' ostensibly for trapping the horses, supposedly to be sold for dog food, leading to federal legislation against such practices, just over these mountains.

 

The week or so after I left the area, my pilot was flying after drinking his lunch and crashed his Cessna (he only 'broke his back').

 

The man who paid for the plane and corraling studies, in 1969 or 1970, had to pay his attorney a 'retainer' of $5,000 just for a defense, and he was a nice guy, a university professor without tenure, who just had a baby with cerebral palsey -- the supposed corraller soon had sued him for major bucks, alleging 'defamation' for alleging the corraller was 'rounding up the horses for dog food' which I think probably was true (my opinion based on what I knew).

 

The whole campaign against this supposed corraling (I saw the corrals and my photos went nationwide) ultimately was financed by a secretary in Reno nicknamed 'Wild Horse Annie', though I never met her. Her entire wealth was dedicated to protecting 'free range horses' (my nickname). (They were a good source of cheap dogfood, which could be rounded up with planes, doors off, a guy with buckshot in the plane could herd the horses into wire fences disguised with sagebrush diverting them into corrals, then load them onto trucks found for the 'rendering plant' into cans for fido's dinner.

 

Yum!

 

Makes you wonder about the French.

 

All this happened just in the hills behind these trains and to the right a little, but I was a good 3,000 feet above, photographing and watching, and the corrallers couldn't see me or the plane, although Nevada National Guard jets almost knocked us out of the sky twice or three times.

 

More of these 'old train' photos to come and much more, including 'OUTLAW BIKERS' who 'befriended me'.

 

If you can imagine that.

 

(Brings back old memories for this old war horse too.)

 

(Never did meet Hoss, Little Joe, or even Big Ben).

 

Thanks for stopping by

 

John (Crosley)

Sounds like a "Bonanza" meets "Sky King" adventure. Thanks for sharing the "rest of the story" f/64

'Sky King' -- Now that does bring out memories, and in fact it was almost exactly like a 'Sky King' adventure -- as close in my life as I ever got to a 'Sky King' adventure.

 

My pilot and I sometimes flew the 'canyons' of the Sierra, downhill only to avoid sudden death which often happens to novice pilots who fly canyons only to find themselves flying into a canyon and have no room to fly over or room to turn and end up crashing into a canyon wall.

 

The trick is to start high, survey the scene and fly down through the canyon with a clear view ahead of you. It was quite some fun.

 

But as I had left Reno, shortly afterward, my pilot, experienced, had some 'liquid lunch' I heard, went out and 'flew the canyons' and cracked up, breaking his back.

 

I tried to 'smell his breath' each time before we went up and thankfully, since I knew him as a sometimes drinker, we flew each time in the morning, I never did catch him drinking before our flights.

 

Often we would take off from Reno airport in a Cessna, head toward the Virginia Mountains, feel like we were going to crash the ridge of the Virginia Mountains, and depend on the 'wave' of air passing over the ridge to lift us over the ridge line (which is a very eery sensation) with the stall indicator often going off -- an audible alarm in the cabin/cockpit which is more than a little scary for a novice passenger to hear and the pilot saying 'pay no never mind/it's just the stall indicator'. (think crash)

 

;~))

 

John