A Very Unusual Protest By A Narrow Gauge Railroad!

You must be thinking - "What the heck is this"? This photo took me by surprise as well when I first came across it. Fortunately there were notations on the negative sleeve and with some additional research there is a story to be told here.

This car belonged to the 3' gauge Eureka Nevada Railroad that ran in Northern Nevada between The junction with the SP and later the WP at Palisade, Nevada and then 84 miles south to Eureka, Nevada. Originally formed in 1873 as the Eureka & Palisade Railroad Company the line served the rich mining district of Eureka until they played out.

Besides mining products and passengers the line depended on the contract it had with the U. S. Post office for handling mail on all points along the line. This contract was very important to the little railroad as mining shipments were down and the mail contract money was needed to make the lines payroll. In 1917 the Postal Department of the U.S. Government had become very lax in when and how much they paid the Eureka-Nevada RR and finally the postal department was far in arrears with the little shortline. This car is what the railroad President John Sexton came up with as a protest of the government action.

The shop forces were told by Sexton to paint this E-N box car in a bright yellow paint scheme and with this red lettering and to then park the car on a short siding next to the Southern Pacific tracks at a spur called Sexton (named after the lines colorful president), where the 2 lines ran briefly parallel. Also, it was to be carried next to the E-N locomotive that came out to meet the Overland train. The intent was for the passengers on the SP passenger trains to see the car and to take back stories of it back home so as to put pressure on the Government to pay the delinquent quarterly mail payments owed to the little railroad.

Sexton had chosen the language on the side of the car to reference California's Anti-Alien Land Law that was quite controversial at the time. Sexton's plan worked as there was a newspaper man on one of the passing Overland trains on the SP one day. He snapped a photo of the bright yellow car and the photo made it's way back to Washington D.C. The protest caught the eye of the government who sent an agent out to speak with Sexton. Sexton's plan had worked. He now had the ear of a government agent and explained to him that the car was simply a new service of the line to make up for the loss of money from the Mail contract payments being withheld. Soon the mail check came in from Washington and normal trains resumed without the bright yellow car. Shortly thereafter, the car was taken back to the E-N car shops at Palisade and repainted back to the usual red/brown color of the E-N work car fleet and put back into normal freight service.

Thus ended one of the most interesting chapters in the history of Western Shortlines.

Martin