Great places for fans of steam locomotives

The mournful wail of the whistle, the whoosh of boiler steam and the welcome warning of "All aboard!" It's all part of the romance of the steam locomotive, ready to power travelers' journeys into parts unknown.

For 80 years the V&T was called Nevada's "Bonanza Railroad," hauling ore from the rich Comstock-Lode mines down to production mills and then carrying lumber back up the hill to Virginia City.

The child-size 1.5-inch-to-1-foot scale of this train is good for children but still has the intricate detail and function of a steam locomotive: a fire must be built and maintained in the firebox to operate the steam engine.

The mechanic-and-tour-guide clad in denim overalls shows steam locomotives, work pits, a circular 10-foot-diameter steam-engine snowplow and more oil cans than even the Tin Man could use.

The Governor Stanford, a 40-ton steam locomotive built in 1863 and once the star of the Central Pacific Railroad, stands as the centerpiece of a life-size diorama about the arduous job of constructing a railroad line across the Sierra Nevada.

The locomotive was built in Philadelphia, dismantled, shipped by boat around Cape Horn at the tip of South America (there were no cross-country railroad tracks in 1863) and reassembled in Sacramento.