I was born and raised in Las Vegas and for the past 10 years I have been building a model railroad based on the Central Nevada mining railroads of the WWI era.  I love researching these railroads and then designing a building a model that brings it to life again.  Finding Myrick's books on railroads of Nevada while in college is what led to my life-long interest in railroad history and model railroads.

Monster Modelworks makes some really nice kits and their 3 story starter kit is available with a laser printed sign.  I ordered one with Goldfield Mercantile for the sign and painted and assembled it this weekend.  By the second decade of the 20th century, many buildings in these Nevada mining towns were being made from brick or stone as the wood buildings tended to burn down with some frequency, so I thought this would make a good contrast to the many frame buildings on the layout.  Here is a photograph of an existing building still standing in Goldfield.

Nevada consists of a large number of mountain ranges with valleys in between.  Often these valleys have no drainage and during the rainy season water will accumulate into a lake (yes, it does occasionally rain in Nevada).  When it warms up the water evaporates and it turns into a dry lake.  Nevada has them all over.  Railroads sometimes crossed dry lake beds with occasional loss of roadbed and equipment when it rained heavily.  I really wanted to depict a dry lake bed and accidentally discovered a technique for modeling one.

The Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad is my 10 x 18 HO depiction of southern Nevada mining railroads circa 1915.  Starting with the founding of Tonopah in 1900, the discovery of significant mineral deposits led to the development of a series of towns including Goldfield and Rhyolite south of Tonopah.