I'd highly debate the "fortunate" part, shame such a great scene is lost but glad you captured it on film to share.
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How great to have witnessed this, Steve!
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WOW! The sound of those baby's rolling through town would've made me want to live there.
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While I do understand the reason for moving the tracks out of town, I too think it's not ultimately fortunate.
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Not only is this a great photograph, but it corroborates a story I read as a teenager in a popular magazine back in the 1970s, about a traveling divorced man with two daughters, one very little. The story mentioned stopping at one of the two towns in northern Nevada beginning with an "E" ("Elko" or "Ely") and how the man had parked his car waiting for someone. He described "tiny tracks running through the middle of the street, on which (to his little daughter's delight) a gigantic train emerged". My recollection was that the story was depressing, but at least I'm pretty sure now Elko was the town he was referring to. Thank you very much for this photo.
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By the way, this would have been around what I believe is 4th and Silver in Elko. It could be an optical illusion, but if not dig the searchlight signal right on what appears to be the sidewalk and the codeline poles in the parallel parking spots. The bowling alley (with a new facade) still exists; the steakhouse may have closed just recently. Again, thank you for posting this. Remembering that short story from around 1974 I went looking for pictures of the railroad on downtown Elko's main street to no avail a few months ago, until now. Wish I could remember who the author was.
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One last thing (you can tell this is something I wish I'd seen): if old maps are to be believed, the searchlight signal belonged to the Southern Pacific, which apparently owned the line to the right of this train. The position of that signal makes sense there, as it seems tilted the wrong way for the Western Pacific traffic coming in at an angle. Even though this wasn't quite true-rails-in-the-asphalt street running, this was still unique in that category with TWO major railroads occupying the same street. Seeing as the WP was set up to provide competition specifically with the SP for shippers to the ports of San Francisco, what an interesting story this spot once was. By the way, I also remember that aforementioned short story talking how the train at that spot had a "clanking infinity of freight cars", which is a nice description of what's about to happen here. Now the area underneath and between the parked cars is a nice, flat, striped street, although on google maps you can still see two parallel stripes in one of the eastbound lanes which seem to mark where the SP tracks were. And I'm off this fascinating and now departed slice of Americana for good now. Like the others on this thread - wish it was still here.
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If you check out the old topo maps on historic aerials, it shows tracks running down two different streets. I believe this is Silver st as well. The old maps also show a couple of yards that are no longer there. Great picture, and it gives you a lot to ponder.
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