Don Sims covers Nevada Northern Railway

The Nevada Northern Railway might be the most remote railroad attraction in the Lower 48, and it’s also one of the most valuable. Just ask any of the thousands of people who make the trek each year out to windswept Ely, the east-central Nevada town that hosts one of our finest steam operations.

Headlined by lovingly maintained 2-8-0s No. 81 and 93 — and eventually 4-6-0 No. 40, undergoing restoration — Nevada Northern holds its own with any steam-oriented museum, offering train rides and shop tours that offer an extraordinary level of grit and authenticity. It’s also a must-visit for serious steam photographers.

Not all that long ago, though, Nevada Northern Railway was a diesel operation, back when it was strictly a freight railroad, or, to be more precise, a mining railroad. And one of the people it attracted was Don Sims, the prolific Los Angeles-area photographer, writer, and historian known for his pictures from Cajon Pass, Donner Pass, the Coast Line, and other storied Western venues.

Here’s how writer David Lustig, Sims’ close friend, described the photographer: “A renaissance man in the truest sense of the phrase, Sims taught college economics and worked various white-collar, private-industry jobs, as well as spending time as a railroader. When he wasn’t repairing one of his automobiles or working in his garage darkroom, he was canvassing the countryside photographing railroading in every form.”

A visit to the David P. Morgan Library a couple of weeks ago yielded some Sims treasures that, near as I can tell, have never been published. What we’re presenting here is all of his Nevada Northern prints from those files, which have been moved to new quarters from the previous Kalmbach Media building.

During the 1950s, Sims easily made the transition from shooting steam to shooting diesel, and if you knew him it wouldn’t be surprising that he’d eventually get to Nevada Northern. As he famously said about the world after steam, “If you think about it, the subject matter really hasn’t changed a bit. I still like to shoot diesels, electrics, transit lines, mountain railroading, desert railroading, and urban railroading. I love railroading and the people who do it.”

He found plenty to work with around Ely. Originally constructed in 1905 to serve a burgeoning local copper industry, Nevada Northern centered around mines near Ely and eventually reached a connection with Southern Pacific approximately 160 miles north at a place called Cobre, Nev. The railroad also connected with Western Pacific at Shafter, Nev.

One of NN’s many distinctive aspects is that long trek up the Steptoe Valley to reach the outside world, when a much shorter route to Eureka, Utah, was possible over four mountain ranges. But NN chose to head north, because, as author George H. Drury noted, “the only obstacle was sagebrush.” (Note: this long stretch of NN is owned by the city of Ely and remains dormant; the steam operation uses only a few route miles near Ely.)

Sims visited in December 1960, when the railroad was still owned by Kennecott Copper Corp. The NN and Kennecott had diesel power from various builders over the years, and when Sims visited he encountered two in operation: Alco RS2 No. 101 and SD7 No. 401, the latter wearing a one-of-a-kind cream, scarlet, and black paint scheme. The Alco was in Kennecott’s orange. At the time, the SD7 was the only locomotive actually owned by Nevada Northern; others were leased from owner Kennecott. The Alco eventually was scrapped in Salt Lake City; the SD7 survives today, out of service, stored at a power plant in Delta, Utah.

What Sims encountered on his visit was a Nevada Northern still straddling two eras. His photos of an engineer signing in for his shift beside an ancient call board, or the East Ely dispatcher making an entry on the train sheet amid a bank of prehistoric telephones, are universal images of railroaders at work. They could easily be scenes from a Class I railroad.

Outside, remnants of an older, vintage operation also abounded, from the defunct water tower at McGill Junction just north of Ely, near Kennecott’s smelter, to the short semaphore protecting mine and mainline movements at the copper mine pit at Rush.

A couple of epilogues are warranted: Kennecott suspended NN operations in 1983 when it closed the McGill smelter and three years later began transferring the property to the White Pine Historical Railroad Foundation, now known as the Nevada Northern Railway Foundation, the formal name of the museum. That long stretch of lonely track up to Steptoe was acquired by the city of Ely in 2006, which, apparently, hangs onto it in case some industrial opportunity arises.

Meanwhile, we lost Don Sims on Dec. 11, 2021, at age 93. What he left behind is priceless, including his insightful images of Nevada Northern Railway. “He maintained his enthusiasm for railroading even as it went through decades of dramatic change,” wrote Lustig in his obituary for Sims in Trains magazine. “It was not lost on Sims that he was a witness to history.”