Virginia & Truckee Railroad Historical Society Conference

A couple of weeks ago, the V&T RR Historical Society held their annual conference in Carson City. As usual, it was great to hear the various clinics on the history of the railroad and how to model it. I gave two clinics: the first was entitled The Circus Comes to the Comstock and covered the various ways the railroad handled the large shows getting them into Virginia City and back again. The other clinic was about the building of the Ormsby and the Storey moguls that I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog.
     The conference banquet finished with a stirring talk about the great Virginia City fire of October 1875. A field trip to the Carson & Colorado depot being restored at Dayton ended the weekend. In the modeling part of the weekend, a couple of folks showed their progress in using 3D printing for making cars for the railroad.

     

One of the many records to be found at UNR. This one shows part of the track

arrangement at Virginia City.

I spent another day in the Special Collections library at the University of Nevada, Reno. They have the bulk of the V&T records and I was able to find some things for which I had been looking from the early 1870s.
 

 It's a good organization and they publish a very informative quarterly newsletter along with an annual book on some facet of the railroad. If you are interested, go their website at  http://vtrrhs.org/.