Re: NNG-Nevada Northern-America's Best Kept Secret

I had the incredible honor of helping the NNRY Museum gang get going in 1987. The place literally looked like everyone went home for lunch and never came back. There were several uncompleted projects in the machine shop just sitting there with tools next to them waiting for someone to come back and finish up. Very spooky. I recall needing a long oiler for #40, and remembered a couple in the machine shop. I went in there and grabbed the first one I found on a work bench. I picked it up (still full of Texaco Journaltex) and it left a perfect impression in dust and rust on the steel bench top. It felt like I was taking some guys personal stuff. I put it back and found another one. There was a bulletin board of company notices going back to 1940. One toward the rear showed the passenger train (which was #40's job) discontinued in 1940. The one on the front informed everyone as of the next day (something like June 1, 1983), the NNRY was shutting down and everyone was laid off.

The NN has complete records on just about every thing there. I looked at #40's file when I was there. #40 was built with an early form of Baker gear that they actually called "Piliod Valve Gear" (Piliod built Baker gear). When she was superheated, she got a new set of Baker gear.
The gear is rather unique because it is set up for indirect motion because of the outside emission piston valves. I called it "Backwards Baker".

In the files was the original price of the engine and what it cost to superheat it. The superheating price was nearly the same as building the entire engine. I don't recall the numbers but it seemed like the locomotive cost around $22k and the superheating cost was $19k.