The windswept deserts east of California’s Sierra Nevada are crisscrossed with thousands of miles of abandoned railroad beds, a legacy of the region’s gold and silver boom town days. Hundreds of now defunct railroad companies, with picturesque names like Tonopah and Tidewater, Va., and Truckee and Carson, Colo., operated until the gold played out or truck transport grew more common and less expensive.

Over the jagged spine of California’s granite backbone, 100 miles to the west, a new railroad track is being laid. But, unlike its narrow gauge cousins that sprang up 150 years ago, this railroad relies entirely on government funding and will likely never be completed.