Photo by Espeef5] Rob Sarberenyi, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Upcoming Events
No ticketed events are currently listed for Carson & Colorado Railway. Many heritage operators publish schedules seasonally or run on regular open hours instead of dated events.
Check the operator’s website for current hours and special runs, or subscribe to event alerts and we’ll email you when something is scheduled.
History
The original Carson and Colorado was incorporated on May 10, 1880, and built a 3 ft narrow gauge line from Mound House, Nevada, south into California's Owens Valley, reaching its Keeler terminus below the Cerro Gordo Mines on August 1, 1883. Sold to the Southern Pacific in 1900 — which romantically dubbed the remote desert route the 'Slim Princess' — the line was whittled away through the twentieth century until the last narrow gauge train in common-carrier service ran on April 29, 1960. In Independence, California, a nonprofit group re-incorporated under the Carson and Colorado Railway name to bring a piece of the railroad back to life: Southern Pacific locomotive No. 18, donated to the town when steam was displaced in the 1950s, was returned to operating condition in a restoration spanning 2009 to July 2017, and on October 15, 2016, it steamed under its own power again — the first time in 62 years. The engine is now housed in a two-stall engine house at the Eastern California Museum in Independence, with close to 1,000 feet of track to operate on.
The Trains
Star of the roster is Southern Pacific No. 18, the 'Slim Princess', a narrow gauge 4-6-0 'Ten-wheeler' built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1911. It started out as Nevada-California-Oregon Railway No. 12, was renumbered 18 after the Southern Pacific bought it in 1926, and spent its career on SP's desert narrow gauge alongside sister engines Nos. 8 and 9. Since restoration the locomotive has traveled: it was leased to the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in 2018-2019 and again in 2021 to help crews train on oil-burning steam power, and it starred at the Nevada State Railroad Museum's Great Western Steam Up in Carson City over the Fourth of July weekend in 2022. Former SP boxcars Nos. 1C and 15 stand on rail beside the engine as part of the exhibit.
Nearby
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