Lecture tells of Hollywood’s courtship with V&T Railroad

CARSON CITY – When Hollywood in the first half of the 20^th Century set its cameras on telling the story of the Transcontinental Railroad, the search for artifacts led it straight to Virginia City and Nevada’s historic Virginia & Truckee Railroad.

The historic V&T locomotives Inyo and Dayton sit face to face in the Jacobsen Interpretive Center at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City. Both locomotives were used in film and television before they became property of the state of Nevada. Guy Clifton/TravelNevada

In the 1930s, with the silver boom on the Comstock waning and the V&T in financial distress, the movie studios became willing purchasers of locomotives and rail cars that the V&T could no longer afford.

It’s a story V&T historian Stephen Drew knows well and he’ll be sharing it in a lecture, “Casting Call: Recreating Promontory? Call the V&T,” at 6 p.m. on Friday, March 29 at the Nevada State Railroad Museum.

Admission is $6 for adults, free for children 17 and younger and for members of the Friends of the Nevada State Railroad Museum.

The lecture is part of the museum’s celebration leading up to the unveiling of its new exhibit “The Transcontinental Railroad in Nevada, What a Difference it Made,” and the 150^th anniversary of the “Golden Spike” ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1879.

Major motion picture studios and their movies, pageants from coast-to-coast,\ and television productions have consistently relied on V&T equipment to depict the “wedding of the rails” story at least 10 times in the past six decades (1939-2005).

Drew’s presentation will feature the Nevada State Railroad Museum’s V&T collection prominently in the talk. That includes the largest surviving artifact from Promontory which has continuously been overlooked: V&T Coach No. 17.

The railroad museum’s locomotives Inyo and Dayton also have played prominent roles in the telling of the Transcontinental Railroad story.

No reservations are required for the lecture. For more information please contact Adam Michalski at amichalski@nevadaculture.org or (775) 687-6953 x224.