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Eureka & Palisade Railroad Historical Society

 

In 1875, the year in which Eureka was built, The Baldwin Locomotive Works built 130 locomotives and, also by then, had exported locomotives to 15 other countries. Eureka was the three thousand seven hundred and sixty-third locomotive build by Baldwin and company, as shown by her builder’s number: 3763, and is of the “American Standard” 4-4-0 design. (This is the standard identification system for steam locomotives: The first number indicates the number of leading wheels; the second number indicates the number of drive wheels; and the third number is the number of trailing wheels on the locomotive.

 

Eureka was the fourth locomotive purchased by the Eureka & Palisade Railroad and is one of only three known surviving narrow gauge engines of the 4-4-0 American Standard design. Her sister engines are Jupiter in the Smithsonian Institution and Sonoma in the California State Railroad Museum. Only Eureka, privately restored by Daniel Markoff, remains fully operational.

 

The Baldwin 4-4-0s were produced during the gilded Victorian Age when there was tremendous pride in American craftmanship and ingenuity. Eureka’s ornate brass domes, gold leafing, and colorful pinstriping along with her highly crafted walnut cab and running boards are typical of the exquisite industrial art popular during the 19th century.

Eureka has been returned to her original 1875 Baldwin factory specifications, including a conversion from oil back to her original fuel, wood. In recognition of the faithfulness of her restoration to her original specifications, Eureka has earned the great honor of being listed on the National Registry of historic places by the U. S. Department of the Interior.

 

Eureka and Palisade Railroad consisted of around 90 miles of track between the northern Nevada boom towns of Eureka and Palisade, and adjacent to the original transcontinental railroad route through north central Nevada. This proximity to the transcontinental route permitted passengers, goods, and silver and lead ore to flow to and from anywhere in the country. Without the E&P Railroad, Nevada’s largely unsettled interior would not have been developed, populated, and mined.

 

Eureka ran over this narrow-gauge line until 1901, when the engine was sold to the Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Company. Her elegant baroque Victorian finish was covered by heavy black paint to hide the grime from her conversion to an oil burner. The locomotive hauled lumber until 1938, when the company abandoned its railroad. Time took its toll on Eureka and she was sent to the scrap yard.

 

Around 1939, rail historian Gerald Best rescued Eureka for a new life as a prop for Warner Brothers’ movies. Eureka’s last movie, The Shootist, was coincidentally John Wayne’s last as well. Eureka appeared in approximately 30 films, a partial list of which is here.

As western movies went out of style, so went the need for a locomotive at Warner Brothers. Eureka was sold to Old Vegas, a theme park in Henderson, Nevada, where she sat on static display as she deteriorated in the elements. In 1985, a suspicious fire broke out and a burning building collapsed on the locomotive burning off her cab and running boards and melting some of her equipment. Firefighters fought the blaze gallantly, but their water warped much of the cast iron on Eureka, leaving her in a state beyond any obvious repair.

 

A year later, in 1986, Las Vegas resident Daniel Markoff saw Eureka still buried under charred timber and in dilapidated shape. Markoff was sad that such a vital piece of Nevada’s early history could be lost to a junk pile, so he came up with a dream to restore Eureka himself. With him being the only bidder for the locomotive, Eureka found a new home with a man with a dream and a passion for history.

Markoff laid a short section of track in the yard at his home and within months, he and friends, the Craddock’s, built a train barn around her. After six years of interpreting museum blueprints, countless hours of historical research, learning a complex range of nearly extinct skills to attempt a museum-quality restoration, and hundreds of hours of effort, Eureka was ready for her debut at Rail Fair 1991, in Sacramento, California.

 

A small group of devoted and skilled volunteers provides the crew for Eureka as she travels around the country operating on historic, narrow-gauge railroads. In addition to Sacramento, she’s run in Eureka and Carson City, Nevada, and in Colorado on both the Durango & Silverton Railroad and the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad to the delight of thousands of railfans from all over the world.

 

Markoff and crew are always looking for opportunities to take Eureka on new and exciting roads, but since Eureka is privately owned, there are no public funds provided to cover the expense of trucking Eureka and her tender to these other railroads. The Eureka & Palisade Railroad Historical Society was created to help raise the funds needed to keep Eureka on the road and to educate people about steam power in U. S. and world history.

 

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