Sheepscot at Dusk. In the twilight on a cold December evening, the WW&F crew couples Forney #10 to a pair of coaches as they prepare for the annual night run to Alna Center....the last run for 2014. You are looking south at the Sheepscot Yard in Alna, Maine. This is the base of operations for the WW&F Museum. When the original WW&F operated in the early 1900s, their base of operations was just a little less than 5 miles to the south of this location, in the town of Wiscasset. There, the WW&F had a yard that included a large shop building, a round house, a turntable, and numerous other facilities. Although that property and the old ROW into Wiscasset is no longer available for reconstruction, it is the goal of the WW&F Museum to recreate the old Wiscasset Yard at the site of the historic Sheepscot Station....which is the location depicted here. Obscured behind the train are the station house, passenger boarding platform and freight house. The large yellow building to the right of the train is the shop building, where new construction of replica equipment is done, as well as restoration and maintenance on surviving historic pieces. This building is also currently used to store much of the rolling stock when it is not in use. The right-most stall of this building is the mechanical shop. This is where the museum's steam locomotives are stored and maintained. The mechanical shop has numerous machine tools and an inspection pit in the concrete floor. Behind my camera position, a 3-way stub switch controls access to the various shop tracks. There is also an enclosed water tank adjacent to the main line, which is the track on the far left. The museum is currently constructing a large, dedicated, car storage building at the west end of the property. When this is finished in 2015, it will hold all of the museum's rolling stock and free up space in the existing shop building for new projects. Eventually, a 3-stall roundhouse and turntable will follow, to provide a permanent home for Locomotives 9 and 10, as well as a third locomotive that is planned for the future.
Perhaps the coolest thing about the WW&F Museum is that progress is evident every time I visit. There is always something new going on up there. A lot of volunteer organizations have big plans. This is one group that is continually turning their plans into realities.