We had visitors from Kentucky over the last week. Both are railfans. In fact, both owned a shortline railroad in Western Kentucky until a couple of years ago. One of their requests was to see a Maine 2 footer. As it happened, we took them to the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington in Alna, ME expecting to see a diesel operation as the last steam run for the season was supposed to have been Labor Day weekend. To our great surprise and delight, the WW&F had steamed up 0-4-4 #10 for an RV group that was visiting.
I hadn’t been to the WW&F for a couple of years and found that they were extending the line and adding runarounds so the loco could lead in both directions. The WW&F is a class operation and they’re working to get Forney 0-4-4 #9 back in operation. To that end, they had a new boiler constructed at the Boothbay Railway Village in Boothbay. I don’t know when #9 will be back in operation, but when it is, it will have a brand new boiler built to ASME specs.
Pics:
Running around at Alna Center
Backing to take water at Sheepscott
Coming back to Sheepscot about 500 yards out at the first crossing (that’s a milepost measured in distance from Wiscasset).
Hi Andre, good to see you are back visiting the mid-coast.
WW&F has a couple of rare 2’ gage steam locomotives. #10 was built by Vulcan Ironworks in 1904, and #9 by The Portland Company in 1891. According to the WW&F website, #9 may be one of only two Portland Company locos in existance anywhere. They also have a diesel-hydraulic Plymouth #52 built in 1964 and a gasoline-mechnical Brookville #51 built in 1947. The track is installed on the original right-of-way of the WW&F railroad that ran in the early 1900s
They have done an outstanding job in restoring these locomotives to operating condition as well as track and other rolling stock. They are an all voluenteer group and have made wonderful progress in the 20 years they have existed. They are open on weekends from late April until the end of October; well worth a visit for anyone visiting the Maine coast.
The WW&F has done an outstanding job of restoring not only the locomotives, but the rolling stock as well. Then there are the reproductions of old buildings. They do good work.
I wish I’d gone there earlier this year. As it is, we’re heading back to CA in about 4 weeks, so volunteering at the place isn’t really an option until we return in the spring. From then on, however…
Oh yeah. In one of the interesting coincidences of the year, Mr. Beasley posted a pic of the 0-4-0T at Rockport over on the Trainboard site ( http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/showphoto.php?photo=116745 ). We also stopped by the park there and here’s my pic of the same thing.
Someone posted this video of the WW&F in action a while back, but I don’t think it was on this forum. It’s part of a PBS program called Restoration Stories.
