Crookedest Railroad Turns New Bend
Nevada and Jim Clark team up to save the Virginia & Truckee.
By: Jana Bommersbach 02/01/2008
Jim Clark was on tap for this project early on. He was a founding member of the Friends of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad and helped build the Nevada State Railroad Museum. By then, he'd already owned three railroads in California and was advising Hollywood on how to film authentic trains in the movies and where to find them. He even took one of V&T's "celebrity" engines, No. 22, to the 1986 World Fair in Vancouver. Called the Inyo and built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1875, No. 22 was featured in Paramount films Duel in the Sun and Union Pacific.
In 2001, Jim moved to Tombstone, Arizona, where he hoped to build a railroad spur leading to tracks in nearby Benson. But the project failed so badly that the owner of the Benson line-the very tracks on which the Earp brothers once rode-gave up in disgust.
"We recently bought tracks for the V&T and guess where they came from? They're from Arizona, part of the 60 miles of tracks torn up at Benson," Jim says. Despite his disgust with the destruction, Jim added, positively:?"But now those tracks are being reused in Nevada to rebuild its history."
Jim is moving back to Nevada to be near the project close to his heart. He notes that over the years, often with his help and sometimes from his own private collection, Nevada has been buying back the original V&T rolling stock. Its state railroad museum now houses the largest collection of V&T locomotives and cars (while museums in California and Pennsylvania also own some stock).
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