Monday, Oct. 11, 2021 | 1:27 p.m.
RENO — Two historic locomotives that were part of the pioneering shift from steam-powered to diesel-electric trains in the mid-1900s are coming back to their home in a northeast Nevada railyard.
Built in 1951, Locomotive 201 is the last survivor among 38 experimental models manufactured by the American Locomotive Company. It is scheduled to be loaded onto a truck Nov. 2 at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, Washington bound for Ely near the Nevada-Utah line.
Details are still pending for the return from Delta, Utah of the No. 401, the first special duty model General Motors built in 1952 in its Electro-Motive Division. It was the only one painted in the “Desert War Bonnet” scheme, a cream, scarlet and black design that remains on it today.
“These both are one-of-a-kind locomotives,” Nevada Northern Railway President Mark Bassett said. “Both have a story to tell and they are both tied into the early days of dieselization of the Nevada Northern Railway.”
The railway purchased both in the 1950s and used them primarily to haul copper to smelters in Nevada, Idaho and Utah until the railroad shut down in 1983.
The diesel-electric locomotive used less fuel and could operate with a smaller crew than its steam-powered counterpart.
