Wiscasset, Waterville &

Farmington

Railway Museum SHEEPSCOT STATION, ALNA, MAINE 04535-0242

November/December 2002

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C onductor Frank Paul, engi neer Steve “uppa, and engine #5

ing a passenger train across Humason Brook. Photo by Bob Cavanagh

First Passenger Trains Cross Humason Brook On the night of Saturday, October 12, 2002, the first

WWA&F passenger train in nearly 70 years crossed over

Humason Brook, An evening train, pulled by steam engine #10, was run as both a special for the Columbus Day work

weekend volunteers and as a night operation refresher course for the operating crew. A passenger with an all-day ticket was aboard.

The work weekend volunteer crowd was smaller than anticipated, probably due to the threat of rain, Nevertheless, the volunteers put nearly all of the track built last fall into service, spiked down the rail on the trestle, and built and ballasted another 303 feet of new track. There was a steady stream of ballast trains all weekend long, using #10 pulling

the caboose and flatcar. On Friday, the first task was to line the curve approaching

the trestle from the south, 1.2. to put the curve in the correct

position (left/right). The next task was to ballast and surface (level) the track between the end of the in-service track and

the trestle, The track on the curve was firmly embedded in ballast up to the top of the rails, so there was some question as

to how we would move it over without several score of

volunteers pushing on bars. Fortunately, Leon Weeks came

through with some heavy-duty come-alongs borrowed from

his employer. These pulled the track over with no effort. This

loosened things up enough that a few people on bars could

fine-tune the curve. Properly positioning the curve was amuch

quicker effort than anticipated, leaving lots of time for ballasting

and lifting the approximately 5(M) feet of track laid last year.

Early on Saturday morning, crews were out spiking the rail to the trestle. Once that was done, Dana Deering led the crew laying new track, and Steve Zuppa led the ballasting crew, Ballast was put out on the remainder of track laid last year. Then, once the proper amount of blocking was in place on the new track, the ballast trains started going oul on the new track,

There were about 40 people present on Saturday. Sunday morning was dry, but rain moved in during the

afternoon, and many of the volunteers that had come long

distances left. Still, it was less wet at the north end than at the

station; there was a steady rain at Sheepscot, but only a drizzle

at the trestle. Crews ballasted nearly to the end of track in the

Visit our web page at: http-/iwww.wwtry.org

morning, then surfaced and tamped from the trestle north 200)

feet.

Monday's crew, again somewhat smaller than the previous day, tamped the curve approaching the trestle. About noon,

the fires on #10 were dropped, and many took a hike north along the right-of-way, up and down “the mountain,” and across

Carleton Brook to where the right-of-way crosses Route 218,

In addition to the improved efficiency provided by the

come-alongs that Leon Weeks supplied, two other things sped our work - an additional loader and excellent grading.

Fred Morse brought his loader to augment the museum's front end loader just in case our loader gave trouble. With both loaders working, Zack Wyllie and Fred could load the flatear with ballast in just 1% minutes.

It would not have been possible to lay so much new track

without the excellent grading job done by Hanley Construction and some museum members that were also employees of Hanley’s. The grading was done from Trask’s road south to where track laying stopped last year. The Hanley crew brought ina roller that compacted the ground and provided us with a smooth, hard, even surface on which to lay track. This was so

helpful that we will be bringing in Hanley Construction to grade the next section of roadbed toward Alna Center.

Nutritional and morale support was given by Clarissa

Percival and John McNamara on Friday, and by Sue and Beth Longo the remainder of the weekend. Sue put ona giant feast for the hungry troops at every meal, with some of the food

donated by the volunteers.

In other news around the museum, the shop building has a

fresh-coat of yellow paint thanks to Boothbay Regional High

School (see page 6), and our Halloween train rides were once again well attended despite a heavy rain (see page 7).

by James Patten

A group of volunteers led Steve Zuppa lines the track immediately north of Humason Brook Trestle

Recent Gifts to the Museum

We are pleased to report that several members and friends have donated railroad artifacts to the museum. Charter Member Jane Tucker gave us six old public timetables from

Midwestern railroads, Life Members donated the following items: Harry Crooker

gave us salvaged 604 and 654 rail with joint bars. Much of this material has since been installed, John Lauer donated a 1930 Maine Atlas map, and Allan Fisher gave the Seth Thomas

Regulator #2 wall clock that now hangs in the Sheepscot

station. Win Nowell gave us 20) Bé:M Railroad manuals from

the 1920 through 1950 period. Malcolm and Mary Hunt donated a number of switch keys, railroad books, and two- font railway timetables,

Annual Members donated the following items: Gary Recave gave us a large number of track tools that were

immediately used during the recent tracklaying weekend, Dave

MacDonald gave two steam gauges and a single-chime steam whistle, while Nat Wilson gave a rare book, “Catechism of

the Locomotive.” Arthur and Dorie French donated an antique

railroad switch lamp. J, Kenneth Lincoln, Sr. gave an old

WW&F oil can, a Turner Dairy cream can, old waybills, and a notebook used by former WW&F president Sam Sewall.

Friends of the museum donated the following items: Steve

Hussar gave a 19° TV/VCR, and David Chase gave WW&F

siding rails, a boxcar center truck pivot, a sheave, and joint bars. We apologize if any of your recent gifts have not been included in the above (October) listing; please remind us and

we will add your gifts to a future list.

fy Allan Fisher

Photo by Bob Cavanaugh

2002 Fund Drive Off to Flying Start

As of November 11th, the Museum's Annual Pund Drive

had reached over $20,000, or better than two-thirds of our goal

of $30,000. Average donations this year have been running

higher than previous years, and this bodes well for achieving our fund-raising goal, ordering Number 9's boiler next spring,

Jason Lamontagne is preparing Number 10 for running gear and cosmetic changes. Zack Wyllie and crew are working hard

to complete the machine shop, and a contractor has been hired to finish erading the nght of way to Alna Center, Your continued generosity will greatly help these and other projects.

and funding additional track work next year.

E. Davies Allan

Dean Allen

Jim Amiate

David Ashenden

James Ashton

James Auman

James Balano

Clarence Ballard

Kent Barker

George Bartlett

Mark Baytala Terry Beal

Fred Bergmann Paul Berry

Jan Bijhouwer James Bocock

John Boardman

Richard Bourdon

John Bradbury Ken Brink

Morrison Brinker

Nick Brown

John Cameron Brown, Jr

Mr & Mrs James H. Brown

RT Brown

Gurden Buck

Robert Buck

Forrest Bunker

George Burdick

Duncan Burns Jr

Martin Butler

William Butler

Benjamin Campbell John Campbell

Sumner Carlson

Richard Carroll

Wilfred Chesebrough Richard Chiodo

Jim Church

R. Richard Conard

Steven Conard

Stephen Corson

O.R. Cummings

David Cummins

Charles Davis

Phillip DeChene Joseph Devonshire

Jack DiSarro

Mernll Donahue

Downeast Railroad Club

Richard Durant

Robert Edgar

Wes Enman

Robert Emerson

Wes Ewell

Gordon Fay

Michael Francoeur

George Freeman Arthur & Dore French

Allen Gagnon (Red's Eats)

Warren Gay Timothy Gilligan

Robert Glinick MD

Charlie Goodwin

Charles Googins

Dorothy Googins Martelle Gordon

Samuel Guild

Karl Gustafson

Pred Haggett

Vie Hamburger

Tony Hannold

John Hansen

Tracy Hastings

Jim Hayes Rebecca Hayes

John Hilton

Thomas Hinkle

F. Berkley Hobart

Robert Hogan

Perry Hood

William Horton

Robert Howard

Paul Hughes Thomas Hughes

Charles Jakobsen

Paul Kehoe

Ben Kittredge

June Koeppe Michael Kohutek

Wayne Langbehn Denneth Lee

Cliff Leighton

Rocco Longo

RE. Lyon & Son David MacDonald

Donors as of November 11 include:

Ken Maguire

John Manley

Donald E. Martin

Andrew Matthews

JR. May

Chris McChesney

Robert McGuire

Steve & Betty Messer

Walter Miete

Harold Mitchell

Robert Moffatt

Channing Morse

Fred Morse

James Morse

Greg Nazarow

David Newman

Winford Nowell

Douglas O'Dell Dean Odiorne

Cliff Olson

Walter Orloff

Francis Parker

James Pasquill I

Phyllis Patten Gerard Paul

Robert Payne

Thatcher Pinkham

Jeffrey Plate

David Porter

Creorge Pouder Steven Provencher

Harold Raymond

Gary Recave William Ree

Joseph Reid

FE. Reeves

Bill Reidy

Frank Rende

Charles Reynolds

Gerald Richards

Warren Ringer

Malcolm Robbins

Edwin Robertson

John Robertson

Avard Rogers

Bill & Sue Sample Wally Schmunk

Morton Schoenberg DDS

William Secor

John Sharood

Robert Shaw

Vernon Shaw

Kenneth Sidelinger

Scott Sidelinger Richard Sisson

Ralph Smart

Lewis Smith

Priscilla & David Smith

Ralph Smith Gary Sodergren

Wayne Sornberger John Spelce

Royal Spencer Russell Steeves

Sharon Stevens

Russell St John

Stanley & Marion Strout Julius Stuck IIT

Jack Sutton

Ralph Sweeney

James Taggart

John Thornton

Christopher Thorp

Henry Tinkham

Frank Trask

Thomas Travis

Paul & Judy Trudeau

Jane Tucker

Everett Turner, Jr

Martin Van Horn

Harry Wagner II

Ellis Walker

Bob & Effie Wallace

F. Van Worner Walsh

Ron Wartinbee

Bill Wheeler

Grant Whipple

James Wiggin

Richard Wittebarg

Leon Wood

Allan Woollett

Charles Young

Mr & Mrs William

Zamagni Heman “apt

2-Foot Musing No. 3 Those of you who read this column more or less regularly

may have noticed that I lean a lot on “speculation” in the

absence of hard facts, and so it is this time as I try to conjure

up a connection between the WW &F and the Monson Railroad.

At first glance it doesn't seem very likely because the closest the two railroads got to each other was about 43 miles as the

crow flies between Albion and Monson Junction, or 38 miles

if you considerthat the WéaeQ reached the outskirts of Burnham. However, a closer examination of the histones of these two

railroads shows the possibility of a connection.

According to Bob Jones in Two Feet to Tidewater, when

the Wiscasset and Quebec reached Burnham, the intent was to

continue on parallel to the Maine Central to Pittsfield. Here they were ta connect with the Sebasticook & Moosehead

Railroad, a struggling eight mile standard gauge short line that

extended from Pittsfield in a westerly direction to the village of Hartland. The $&M was to be narrowed to two feet and the line extended north to a connection with the Canadian Pacific

at Brownville Junction. The promoters of the W&Q seemed to

have the idea that they could siphon off a lot of Canadian export

traffic to the port of Wiscasset. This was really a pipe dream because, as Bob Jones points out, it was very unlikely that the Canadians would bypass the ports of Halifax and St. John for

an American port.

Anyway, this all happened around 1894, and as we all know,

the Wide? never even made it into Burnham, and the $4:M

was taken over by the Maine Central in 1911. So where did the

Monson fit into this, you may ask, To answer that question we drop back a few years to 1886. The Monson Railroad had been

built a few years earlier to carry slate from the quarries around

Monson to the standard gauge Bangor & Piscataquis Railroad at Monson Junction. Like all other railroads in that era, the

Monson got the expansion bug. As Roger Whitney describes

it in The Monson Railroad, the Monson was going to extend

their line north to a connection with the Canadian Pacific at

Greenville, There was also to be an extension south from

Monson Junction to a minuscule village called Wellington.

At the same time, the Sebasticook & Moosehead was to extend their track to connect with the Monson at Wellington,

which would give them u line to Greenville on Moosehead Lake, What kind of traffic was going to flow between Pittsfield

and Greenville has not been recorded, but in those days just

having a railroad was supposed to make everyone's fortune, sort of like the dotcoms of our day.

Now we come to the speculation part. Looking at the map,

it would seem to me that the W&Q would have been better off following the old Monson survey north from Hartland to reach

the Canadian Pacific at Greenville instead of Brownville Junction, In the first place, Greenville was 33 miles closer to

Montreal and the West where all the traffic was to come from. Secondly, the route had been surveyed, and the Monson trackage was already laid, witha few more miles graded south of Monson Junction. Thirdly, some of the Monson’s slate

business could have found its way down to Wiscasset for shipment to the big cities via coastal schooners. Lastly,

Greenville was a much better jumping off spot for Quebec

City than Brownville Junction.

It is hard to believe that the W&Q people didn’t know about

the earlier Monson scheme. So why didn't they take advantage of the Monson route instead of planning to meander through the wilderness to Brownville Junction? [think that by the time

the WéQ had laid track to the outskirts of Burnham, the idea of building through to Quebec had lost a lot of its luster. The fact that the W&Q made only a feeble attempt to cross the

Maine Central at Burnham would tend to support this conjecture. They already had their eye on a connection to the Sandy River, which was a lot closer. [f that were the case,

Brownville Junction was as good a place as any to aim for in

their promotional literature. To wrap this Musing up, | have to say that no matter how

hard I “speculate,” I can’t really make a connection between the WéeQ and the Monson, but it was fun going through the

exercise.

by Ellis Walker

Sebasticook & Moosehead Railroad #2 with a passenger tram

Photegrapher waknewn

Monson #3 with a carload of slate at Monson Junction, Could we have seen cars like this passing over the WW&P to Wiscasset?

Postcard reproduction; photographer unknown

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Students from Boothbay Regional “Project Graduation” paint the engine house,

Phate by Eric Larsen

Student Project Aids Museum

On Sunday, October 20th, students from Boothbay Regional

High School's “Project Graduation,” members of the local

Prudential Financial office, and members of the WW&F Railway Museum teamed up to provide a volunteer workday

at the museum.

Sunday morning there were 20 students and many of their

parents at the station, eager to work. After a brief meeting in

coach 3, the group was given a train ride up north of the trestle.

Upon theirreturn, the participants split into two groups: painters and track crew, Stewart Rhine was the painting foreman, and

Fred Morse led the track crew.

Alter recenving buckets and broushes, the painters went right

to work. While the students painted the lower portion of the engine house, some of their parents set up staging to reach the

top, The group started on the front and west side, and painted around to the back. They worked at a rapid pace until about

noon when the muscum provided a cookout lunch for all of the

workers. After lunch, the painting crew completed the east side and north end. The entire building was painted in just four

anda half hours, which may be a museum record,

While the painters were at work, the track crew laid

approximately 100 feet of crushed stone along the tracks by the machine shop and carried 150 railroad ties to the end of the line where they will be used for future track extension.

The effort was even more successful than the most optimistic projections. Thankfully the weather cooperated, and

a perfectly cool Maine autumn day helped make everything go smoothly. Hopefully the participants enjoyed themselves sufficiently that several will return as museum volunteers.

The project was part of Prudential Financial's “Global

Volunteer Day and Challenge Grant” program, which seeks to offer a helping hand to local non-profit organizations like

Project Graduation, In addition to the museum's receiving the benefit of all of this help, Project Graduation will receive a

$1,000 donation from Prudential Financial for their donation

of time.

Adam Maguire, owner of the local Prudential Financial franchise in Boothbay, sponsored the event. He and his associate Eric Larsen, a museum member, felt that taking

Prudential’s “Global Volunteer” program a step further to

benefit not only one, bul bwo non-profil groups was a great

way to contribute to the local community. Special thanks vo out to all that participated and to those

who helped make this project a success. The students now have an understanding of Maine's unique narrow gauge history, and

the WW&F Railway Muscum now has an engine house that is

well sealed for the winter.

by Eric Larsen and C. Stewart Rhine

In Memoriam

It is with great sadness that we learn of the deaths of Frederick

Bergmann, Lawrence “Brownie” Brown, and Frank C. Menair ['V. Each was a wonderful contributor to the museum's work, and we will miss each of them greatly. Our condolences 2o out those they have left behind.

Last Steam of the Year - Victorian Christmas - December 21! The WW & F Railway Museum will offerits second annual Victorian Christmas celebration on Saturday, December 21. As with the first event last year, steam trains will run all day, Horse-drawn wagon or sleigh rides and a magic candy tree are planned, In the evening, there will be a potluck supper in the freight house, All events will be free, and if last year’s abundance of food is any indication for this year, even those who do not contribute food to the potluck should feel free to purtuke.

On a rainy Saturday evening, October 26th, area residents enjoyed free rides on the WW&F Halloween trains. During 242 hours, there were 267 riders, At the end of the evening, “witch” Brenda Sisson rode back to Sheepscot from Sutter's Crossing, where she had stirred a witch's brew in a large cauldron over an open fire.

Phote by Jolin McNamara

To join the W.W.&F. Ry. Museum or to send a contribution (tax deductible) please use the form below, ———— ee eee

Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway Museum Sheepscot Station, Alna, Maine 04535-0242

Please sign me up as follows:

Life Membership ...........0.00... (1 $200.00 #9 Fund

Annual Membership ............. O $20.00 Additional Contribution

Receipt Requested __

NAME

ADDRESS

ZIP

(Please make checks payable to “W.W.&F. Ry. Museum.”)

|

A week before Columbus Day, a procession of volunteers carries ties to the end of the line, while

almost out of sight on the far right, Dan Newman works to extend the magneto telephone system. Photo by Bob Cavanegh

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