The Nevada-California-Oregon Railway is pleased to announce the start of our charter year membership drive! As one of the newest railroad historical societies, we are dedicated to preserving the legacy of the three-foot narrow gauge railway that ran from Reno, Nevada to Lakeview, Oregon and through Sierra Valley to Clio.

Your interest, and donation, will help us tell the fascinating story of the N-C-O Ry. and move us further in accomplishing our mission. Contributions from members like you help cover the costs of moving rolling stock, preserving artifacts important to N-C-O history, and helping us restore freight and passenger cars that ran on the railway.

To become a charter member, go to https://www.ncory.org/membership/

Charter memberships will be available up to April 30, 2022.

As the Board of Directors of the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway, we are excited to announce the start of memberships, and to bring fellow enthusiasts together to help preserve the legacy of the N-C-O Ry. So click on one of the links above to sign-up online, or print and mail the membership form located on our website, and come join us on a historical adventure!

Shane Starr
Eugene Vicknair
Andrew Brandon
Laura Snell
Trevor Albertson

Any thought to ROW acquisition? Much of the N-C-O became the SP Modoc line, which UP mostly abandoned around twenty years ago, and in an area with not particularly high real estate values.

There are a lot of thoughts concerning ROW and property acquisition. Several NCO structures still exist in Alturas and the group is exploring acquisition of a couple that may be available. Also looking for property for permanent museum.

Currently, a former lumber mill shed is being leased to hold the NCO passenger cars that have acquired, while another location with access to workshop will hold the NCO freight cars being acquired.

How fast this all happens depends on funding, but a lot of good plans are in the works.

Eugene

Are their any original N-C-O Railway locomotives still in existence?

Wes

Track? I'm sure most of it doesn't look like it did when it was narrow gauge, but still it would be nice to have for possible excursions.

Well, the three existing Southern Pacific narrow-gauge locomotives were originally built by BLW for the N-C-O. These are numbers 8, 9, and 12 (renumbered by SP to #18).

#8 was given to Nevada and is currently on display in Sparks, Nevada.
#9 was given to Inyo County, California, along with the Laws Depot site and both are part of the display maintained by Bishop Museum & Historical Society.
#18 was given to Inyo County and displayed in the community Park at Independence (the county seat); it was/is leased to the current Carson & Colorado R.R. preservation group which restored it to operation and is currently subleased to the Durango & Silverton for the current operating season.

Good fortune with this venture to all involved.

If you are only able to properly safeguard paper and materials, you
will have accomplished a lot.

I know that not everyone makes use of Facebook, but the N-C-O group does have a Facebook page. It shares photos from a recent volunteer work weekend. These show work cleaning up the two former baggage-RPOs and a field trip to view a box car body (former Florence & Cripple Creek car).

If anyone is interested in paper records, the California State Railroad Museum has a quantity of records, including Accounting journal records, that were saved from the SP storage Orient Warehouse in San Francisco. These are in safe off-site storage and need to be requested in advance.

Also the Special Collections of Stanford University is home to minute books and accounting record journals for a good number of SP predecessors. These were gifted to the University by the Union Pacific. N-C-O minute books and the minute books of its Reality subsidiary are in the collection. These too are in safe off-site storage and need advance request.

I have utilized both collections researching the N-C-O and other narrow gauges.

We are working on a deal with a local organization to have a space for climate controlled archive and artifact storage. Hope to announce something on that soon.

We have already been gathering images and artifacts.

Eugene Vicknair
VP - NCORy