Re: Then and then photos on the C&C

You are correct, those photographs are taken on the same day at different times. The distant shot shows the V&T passenger train stopped at the depot. The date on this photo is some time in 1882-1883, the cars are loaded with new ties headed for the front. It is likely 1882 as the C&C started receiving ties from Mono Mills (by wagon) to Benton once the depot was established there.

The cars without "sills" are La Mothe Pipe Flats, the sills are a menagerie of gas pipe and fittings. The C&C operated La Mothe Boxcars and Flat cars. The C&C was hoping to save money by ordering those cars, but got a shoddy deal and wound up receiving a complete, assembled box car, followed by a mess of pipe and fittings leaving them to assemble them on their own. These cars also excluded the required woodwork and in the end they wound up spending a bit more than they anticipated. In service the cars tended to shake themselves apart and the lot of cars were quickly replaced during the Tonopah boom with the influx of NG cars transferred from the SP lines in California. Two La Mothe box cars exist in the NSRM collection.

The DSP&P operated a series of La Mothe Gondolas that show up in a couple photos. The framing for all the variants is the same across Box/Flat and Gondolas.

The Fast Freight car (with the clerestory) is one of 4 cars converted into Wells Fargo express service. All were La Mothe boxcars with an added clerestory of the type the V&T shops liked to put on cars (C&C Caboose 1 and V&T Construction Car 6 received them). Here is a commonly reprinted photo of Express Box #300 at Mound House in the 1890s.

The C&C had a single refrigerator car, converted from a V&T shops built Ventilated Box. It was converted in mid 1888 and remained in that service until 1908 when it was converted back to a boxcar by the N&C/SP before it was eventually broken up and used as a bunk house in Mina. Over the years the remains of this car moved around the desert near Hawthorne and approx. half of the car remain in the desert today. Randy Hees and I were just out to visit the car a week ago.

Andrew Brandon
A fixture here since Y2k.
[www.pacificng.com]
[www.spnghs.org]

"An end to red domes in our lifetime!"