Almost all trains operated by the museum now go up the Keystone line.

The museum did rebuild the Highway 50 crossing between Ely and McGill, but I see no evidence that it has been used. Adverse branch is out of service, and has been for quite a while, and will need a lot of work before it can be operated on again. Any trains that go north don't make it much beyond Hiline Junction, if at all.

Nothing has operated on the entire Ely-Shafter mainline for quite some time. BHP Nevada Rail quit in 1999, their locomotives left in the winter of 1999/2000, and the last train over the line ran around 2001 or 2002 to bring a couple MRS-1 locomotives donated to the museum into town.

As Robbie says, the Currie crossing has been paved over. S&S Shortline Leasing has rehabilitated the line from Shafter to just north of the Currie crossing...they did have a flurry of business when they first opened, specifically a long line of covered hoppers stored in the Dolly Varden/Mizpah area, but they have been gone for maybe a year now and nothing was visible anywhere on the line when I drove by it earlier today. S&S has their ex-Oregon Pacific/Port of Tillamook Bay GE 45-tonner and an ex-DRGW caboose on a siding at Shafter, along with some m-o-w equipment, but I haven't seen much if any evidence that any of it has moved yet this year. S&S also has a hy-rail boom truck and a piece of track maintenance equipment (a tamper, I think) at Currie, and they were replacing a few rails not far north of Currie earlier this spring.

The Ely mines are trucking their product to a reload on the UP at Wendover, where a switching company has one or two small locomotives they use to switch cars. They ship concentrate in unit gondola trains at the rate of somewhere around once or twice a week. The Mining Quarterly published by our Elko paper had a nice cover story article on the reload within the last year.

That's what has crossed my radar...

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV