Virtual Reality Tour of
Donner Summit Train Tunnels

Howard Goldbaum is an emeritus professor of journalism at the University of Nevada at Reno. He has just completed a project, developing a virtual reality tour of Donner Summit. You can access the tour and (virtually play around on Donner Summit:

https://allaroundnevada.com/donner-summit/

Dr. Goldbaum became interested in the documentation of the Donner Summit tunnels and snowshed after he and Wendell Huffman (Nevada State Railroad Museum) explored the area as part of the research for their book featuring the 3D CPRR photographs of Alfred A. Hart (https://waitingforthecars.com/). We recommend this book highly; you can find a review of it on the book review page of our DSHS website or the March, ’13 issue of the Heirloom. Back then (2010), you could drive through the Summit Tunnel. Goldbaum and Huffman used a million-candlepower light to illuminate the vertical shaft area of the tunnel interior. Wendell’s captions from the book are used extensively in the info panels of the virtual reality (VR) project and in the captions on the 3D gallery of Hart’s images which is linked from the project page (the first URL above)

Howard Goldbaum is an Emeritus Professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. He taught courses in media (photography, audio, video, web design, and virtual-reality imaging) there for 17 years. He also served as director of the School's graduate program. Prior to that he was professor and director of the Multimedia Program at Bradley University (Illinois). His long career in media included years as working as a photojournalist and multimedia producer.

One of his long-term research projects explores the ancient monuments of Ireland and their traditions of folklore and mythology. This project uses virtual-reality environments to document the monuments and their landscapes.
https://voicesfromthedawn.com

A pioneer in the development of virtual-reality photograph, he was the first to create an underwater VR environment, in 1997.
https://allaroundnevada.com/tropical-paradise/ He has worked as a consultant in multimedia and digital imaging, and has won numerous awards for his work. He is the creator of the All Around Nevada website [https://www.allaroundnevada.com], and the co-author of a book of historic railroad 3D photographs. https://waitingforthecars.com