Skip,
Sadly there is about a snowballs chance in hell of the NCNG ever running for more than 2 miles on the original ROW. While mostly south of Grass Valley to the Bear River bridge site is not built on, it is owned in one way or another. Part of the ROW between Grass Valley and Nevada City has been cut away by Highway 49 and could not be rebuilt through that area.
The Grass Valley Depot/Machine Shop site is open and could be utilized, but the home owners who all have houses above the yard raised complaints about tourists looking into their backyards so that site was not used. In the past 20 something years the group has been moving the equipment to various locations. Finally it came to rest at the Northern Queen Inn and resting in open space the hotel had in exchange for the hotel using our spare rail for their operation.
The current museum site was donated partially by the Ramey family (owners of the Northern Queen) and TDK shortly before thier office shut down. We have trackage that connects to the Northern Queen Inn, however we will never operate anything down to the Hotel. We leave it up to them to operate to us if they like, but due to some bad blood we now avoid the Northern Queen when possible.
NCNG 5 while certainly a nice machine has its share of problems as outlined by the shoddy boiler. Universal kept the firebox of the original boiler and then had the new fabricated boiler mounted on it. The new firebox rests inside the old firebox and is maybe 6-8 inches deep, I haven't measured the exact depth. In addition when Universal stopped using the engine they left the boiler half full of water in the back lot. This boiler made the engine operate so poorly that it could barely move itself down the track, much less pull any equipment. The solution for this was to build a motorized "coach" out of the remains of an SPng stock car. They parked #5's tender and built a brand new "Tender" which housed a steam generator and other fx equipment, outfitted the cab with controls for this equipment. At some point, they torched the brake hardware off #5's tender off, we aren't sure where it went.
Once #5 returned to Nevada City, it recieved a lot more work than most people realise. A new tender frame was built for #5's tender, the fake "tender" was scrapped in short order. and #5 was made to look more presentable. When we started working on #5 to make her ready for the museum over a year ago, we did as much as we could. All movie studio additions in the cab were removed, the proper cab fixtures were put back in. New cab windows, doors and seats were built. A generator was added back on the engine (not the original since Universal lost the original at some point). The pilot was repaired, although we did not get around to building a proper boiler tube pilot, it still wears its Universal job. The pony truck equilizer was found to be severely bent, we dropped it, straightened it and put it back in correcting a derailing problem. While I was between the frame I looked for evidence of any cracks but did not see any "new" ones. I found a couple patched up ones near the cylider saddle that were fixed years ago.
The engine was then repainted, and as a nice little feature, we made the airbrake system operational. After years of misuse and its derelict state, the brakes operated beautifully.
Currently some of the guys are working on the tender frame, I built the brand new brake beams for the tender, and have helped Ken Yeo with the rest of the brake system from time to time. Shortly the tender will have fully operating brakes as well, once the tender is done it will join the engine inside the building.
While we don't have anywhere to truly operate, and we may never have a place, we stay busy. One day I hope to see #5 run again, its just going to take a lot of money. Maybe when this happens, we can find a better place for her to stretch her legs, but for now, we make due with what we have.
-=Andrew=-
