Northern Nevada Railway in Ely, Nevada

From Great Basin National Park, we drove another hour to Ely. We checked in to caboose 22 at Nevada Northern Railway. It is a real working caboose with three single beds, no electricity and no air conditioning. We opened the windows and were pretty comfortable. The engineer intern told us not to mess with the brakes or we might take off down the track. We were careful about that.

Luckily, we brought a picnic breakfast, because we couldn't have dragged the kids away from the caboose in the morning. They climbed and played for about two hours before we walked to the bunkhouse for showers.

Tour of the caboose: http://youtu.be/ek09YNjJfmw

We walked over to the train station and got our tickets for the train.

Ikey blows the horn on the diesel engine: http://youtu.be/Q-C-_M_EfWI

We had lunch at All Aboard Café just outside the rail yard. Everybody ordered a "Caboosey" which is a hamburger.

Can you see the kids' new train socks?

We took ourselves on a little tour of Ely and found the beautiful old courthouse with copper doors.

We drove home through the Salt Flats which took about three hours. Ikey drew trains in his notebook the whole way. I looked back and found him studying his socks and copying the trains into his drawing.