Essay
Nevada Central Narrow Gauge
By Michael Brown
Through the wide expanse of Nevada once rolled a little railroad known as the Nevada Central. It was created to serve the mining town of Austin, Nevada, linking it to an outside rail connection at Battle Mountain, Nevada, a station on the Central Pacific's mainline. The railroad served Austin for close to sixty years. The Nevada Central's story is similar to that of many narrow gauge lines. It was born during the great mining boom of the old west, only to die in the great depression of the 1930's.
After the meeting of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869, one of the largest railroad building booms in the history of the world took place. The west was being opened up at a tremendous pace, and to do that, railroad transportation was needed. The mining industry, at that time was the backbone of many western state’s economies, and the need for cheaper transportation to haul ores and bring in supplies to the mines was required. The silver mining camp of Austin was a perfect example of this need. It was located 90 miles south of the Central Pacific's main line. The lack of adequate transportation was hampering its growth. The cost of moving ore to the nearest railhead by mule team was slow and expensive. A railroad to serve the camp was the next logical step.
In 1870's the Manhattan Silver Mining Company had consolidated most of the mines on Lander Hill. The company grew to have a lot of influence in the area and its secretary M..J. Farrell was the state senator for Lander County, Nevada. Farrell set out to change the lack of a railroad with a bond subsidy to be offered by Lander County. The Governor promptly veto the bill in the 1874 legislature. After much debate the legislature over turned the Governor’s veto. The legislature authorized Lander County in 1875 to grant a $200,000 bond subsidy to build a railroad with a time limit of five years to complete the project. Farrell found attracting capital to the project difficult. Lyman Bridges a important Chicago engineer became interested in the project along with Anson Phelps Stokes (grandson of the founder of the Phelps Dodge) a partner in the Manhattan Silver Mining Company. Construction was begun in mid 1879 and crews went to work at a break-neck pace to bring the line within few miles of the Austin town limits with less than a day left before the deadline to collect the bonds. An emergency meeting of the Austin city council extended the town limits and the last rails were spiked just minutes before the deadline.
After a great deal of struggle the Nevada Central Railroad was finished to Austin in 1880. It was built primarily to haul low-grade ore from the mine to the main line of the Central Pacific. Ironically, no sooner had the railroad been completed than the revenues from the mines began to decline. However the line was thought to be of value to the Union Pacific for a proposed route to southern California and was purchased for that purpose. However the UP ran into financial difficulties and the road was cast out of the system. The Nevada Central would struggle on for the next 50 years, with only a meager amount of traffic to sustain it. When its charter expired in 1938 the railroad was abandoned.
The Nevada Central never achieved the success its founders envisioned for the line. It was a product of the mining industry and therefore was destined to suffer the same fate as that industry. There was not enough freight from other activities to sustain it. What was surprising was how long it lasted. A great deal of the important equipment the line was saved and restored and is now apart of the California State Railroad Museum. See my new book "Nevada Central Narrow Gauge" .
