Some photos of abandoned rail and mining equipment around Nome, Alaska, including the abandoned ex-New York Elevated 0-4-4Ts and a gold dredge:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artchase/s ... 383868259/

Interesting pix. Must be nice to be up there in the dry season; I was there in July of '99, and the whole area around the engines was water up to my ankles. Nice to see the "railroad to nowhere" display now has walkways, so there must be some effort to preserve the scene.

He actually has photos of two operations here. The standard gauge line with the ex New York Elevated Fornies is the former Council City and Solomon River Railroad. The equipment stuffed and mounted in Nome proper is three foot gauge equipment from what I believe was called the Seward Peninsula Railroad. At least, the Nome Historical Museum has a photo of a Shay lettered with that name. This line ran straight north from Nome toward the abandoned mining town of Taylor. It closed when the bottom fell out of the metals markets in the thirties, but remained intact. During WWII, the army patrolled it using rail wheel equipped jeeps; my dad had a photo of one with an aircraft lading gear wheel tied down on the hood, as they made a trip to rescue a plane that had made an emergency landing on Solomon Lake (not the same as the river of that name.)

After the war this line was used sporadically for tourist excursions by some private individuals who had an enclosed motor car or speeder of some sort; there is a picture in existence showing it jauntily lettered "Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe". In 1999 Dad and I drove the gravel road north of Nome toward Taylor; the lake is still there, as is the house where they spent the night. On that trip we found three narrow gauge flatcars lined up high on a hillside, flipped over on their decks, still complete with trucks, wheels, and all hardware.

Muldowney or Moore have obviously been there. . .





. . . plates are gone! :-)