I'll begin by narrowing my scope. The two most powerful uses of the engine were in the ship and the train. I'll focus on the latter.

There are several sources of information which I wish to recommend as basic;

Five books...
Jawbone; Sunset on the Lone Pine by Phil Serpico
Railroads of Nevada & Eastern California, Vols 1, 2, and 3 by David F. Myrick
and, best of all, according to NAPA DAVE who should know,
Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge by Mallory Hope Ferrell
...cover the history of rails in our area in admirable and encyclopedic fashion.

Three others...
The Story of Inyo by W. A. Chalfant
The Water Seekers by Remi Nadeau
Water and Power by William L. Karhl
...describe the building of the L.A. Aqueduct. A story for the ages.

Trains have been used in many films. Mostly in chase scenes or as background for intrigue and adventure - such as in Sinister Journey, Three Godfathers, and two of my favorites in which Agatha Christie first uses a steam train in Murder on the Orient Express and then a steam boat in Death on the Nile. But I've only seen one which truly captures the steam train - the thrill and danger of that powerful beast, the dirt and noise and heat, the roads, bridges and tunnels, the life of those who ran it. La Bete Humaine, Jean Renoir's great 1938 classic.
Sinister Journey is a beast of a different sort...but a very special one. It's a terrible Hopalong Cassidy potboiler of the '40s and comes packaged with four others from the same period- equally bad - in a modern DVD. One of the others - The Showdown - has some excellent shots of an old 4-4-0 woodburner of the 1870s or '80s pulling into a station. Sinister Journey features our own C&C #8 pulling a string of cars around the desert as background for various (silly) scenes.
But there is one sequence which tells a great story. Hoppy and his sidekicks are just finishing a long trek across country when they pause to let a train pass. One of the sidekicks comments "Wouldn't it have been great to have made this trip in the comfort of one of those cars". The film was set in the last years of the nineteenth century and that says it all; either you traveled in comfort on a train or in real discomfort on or behind a horse.
And there's another observation to be made; The film was shot in 1948. At the time most of the C&C rolling stock was about 50 years old...and it showed. What had been true in 1898 was absolutely not true in 1948. Why rattle around on a 50 year old train when you could travel comfortably in a modern car?

And here's a great article about trains and art and passion.

Keeler did have an engine house but it burned in 1946

Economically, the contrast couldn't be greater. The V&T, built to exploit the riches of the Comstock, was much, much stronger during its heyday. But there's more to the story than money. Carson & Colorado and Virginia & Truckee both lasted about 80 years - kept alive during their latter days by the largesse of their owners and the love of their communities and personnel. There's something about these old engines and isolated routes

that inspires people, commands their loyalty.