The Glenbrook is one of the main displays at the Annex Building at the Nevada State Railroad Museum. It has been fully restored to its 1880’s appearance, and is operational, running several weekends during the summer season. The text of sign about the Glenbrook:
Locomotive Glenbrook
Carson & Tahoe Lumber & Flume Co.
Lake Tahoe Railway & Transportation Co.
The steam locomotive
Glenbrook is a narrow gauge 2-6-0 freight locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia in 1875. It is one of the few surviving relics of the extensive lumbering activity around Lake Tahoe that supported the Comstock from the 1870s through the end of the 19th Century. For nearly 25 years it pulled trainloads of cut timbers and cordwood from Glenbrook sawmills to Spooner Summit, from which point a flume carried the wood products down to the Virginia & Truckee Railroad at Carson City.
With the exhaustion of the Comstock and the demise of the local lumber industry, the
Glenbrook and its railroad were relocated to Tahoe City, forming a connection between the lake and the Southern Pacific at Truckee. There, the
Glenbrook pulled trainloads of tourists for another quarter century.
Presented to the Nevada State Museum in 1943, the engine was a landmark attraction in from of the old mint building in Carson City for nearly four decades. In 1981 it was relocated to the Virginia & Truckee Railroad Museum (subsequently Nevada State Railroad Museum) with the goal of restoring the venerable locomotive. While significant work was accomplished between 1981 and 1986, little was done in the subsequent twenty-three years as other project to precedent. However, in 2010 the E.L. Wigeon Foundation made a significant grant to complete the project and work resumed in earnest.
After careful reconstruction, the old boiler was tested for licensing in November 2014, the first time there was steam in the locomotive since 1926. The locomotive was first operated for the public on Memorial Day weekend 2015.
Additional information from National Register files:
Built in 1875 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, Pa., Carson & Tahoe Lumber & Fluming Go's, engine No. 2, the
Glenbrook, carries the manufacturer's boiler construction number of 3712. When new, the narrow gauge steam powered engine, with a 2-6-0 wheel arrangement, was equipped with six 41 inch diameter drivers (the middle set are blind or have no flange), 13x16 inch cylinders and a working boiler pressure of 130 Ibs. per square inch. The engine itself weighed 46,000 Ibs. at time of delivery and was rated a tractive effort of 7,290 Ibs. It burned cordwood as fuel. The
Glenbrook meaures 39'-9" from the front pilot beam to the rear face of the tender beam. It is 11’ 5” from the top of the stack to the top of the rail.
The Carson & Tahoe Lumber & Fluming Company once controlled a vast empire that supplied enormous quantities of forest products to the mines and mills of the Comstock Lode. The
Glenbrook is one of the few artifacts of this empire, other than traces of the old railbed and a few building. The
Glenbrook was one of six steam engines utilized by the firm to haul lumber and cordwood supplies from the sawmills at
Glenbrook on Lake Tahoe up to the head of a lumber flume, 8.75 miles by rail with 800 feet of elevation gain. From Spooner Summit, 7,000 plus feet in the Carson Range, the wood was floated down to Carson City at which point it was taken by rail to the Comstock.
Near the end of the nineteenth century much of the land owned by The Carson & Tahoe Lumber & Fluming Company had been logged over and there was was less demand for forest products by the mines of the Comstock Lode. By the end of 1898 members of the Bliss family incorporated the Lake Tahoe Railway & Transportation Co. The new company acquired the lake vessels, wharves, shop buildings and the old lumber railroad which was dismantled and shipped by barge across to the California side of the Lake Tahoe. Starting at Tahoe City, a new narrow gauge line was built north to Truckee, 15 miles distant. On May 1, 1900, the railroad opened for service not as a lumber hauler but primarily as a tourist railroad. For the next several decades the
Glenbrook pulled passenger trains between, Truckee and Tahoe City until the Southern Pacific Railroad Co. purchased the Lake Tahoe tourist line in 1925 and changed the track to standard gauge. The
Glenbrook>/i> was sold and set in storage until 1943 when it was donated to the Nevada State Museum.