The WW&F in 1990 (photos)

Rather than hijack Matthew Malkiewicz's excellent WW&F photography thread, I thought I should start a different one to show some pictures of the WW&F Railway Museum's very beginnings. These were taken by my dad when we visited the embryonic museum in the summer of 1990, when I was 14 years old. (I had shared them previously on the WW&F Discussion Forum, but thought the wider NGDF audience might find them interesting as well.) As Matthew so eloquently noted, before the museum's founding in 1989 by Harry Percival, there were no structures or trackwork in place at Sheepscot, and yet it now somehow seems to have all been preserved intact since the original railroad was in operation -- truly an amazing achievement in just 27 years.

As I recall, I first read about the WW&F restoration project in either late 1989 or early 1990 in the late Dick Andrews' column in Narrow Gauge & Shortline Gazette, "Extra Narrow Gauge Junction". Dick reported that a fellow named Harry Percival had somehow acquired the remaining assets of the original WW&F from the estate of Frank Winter, and wanted to rebuild the railroad. I was intrigued, and convinced by dad that we should check it out and volunteer our labor for a few hours when we were on vacation in Maine that summer. So my dad phoned Harry and got directions to "Sheepscot Station", which turned out to be just a clearing in the woods on Cross Road.

Harry had a grand plan, and the first step was to build the shop -- because before he acquired any equipment, he was going to need a place to store it out of the weather. (I wish all railroad preservationists were so forward thinking!) When we got there he had already put down a pad of crushed stone, laid a short piece of track, and had started framing the building over it.

That's 14-year-old me bending over in the blue shirt, my brother Steve (looking unusually tan that summer) in the white and green shirt, and Harry Percival himself on the right:


This original structure is still there and now forms the north end of Bay 1 of the current shop building. (My brother and I in our shorts and sneakers were admittedly not quite appropriately dressed for work, but then again it was a hot and hazy summer day and we were on vacation, so I think it can be excused.) What you see in this photo is all there was at Sheepscot at the time.


We also drove up to the other end of the railroad at Albion, where we found the depot almost ready to collapse. Thankfully, it has since been restored by the Albion Historical Society. (I don't have any recent photos of Albion of my own to compare with this, but check it out in Google Streetview: Google Maps: Benton Road, Albion, Maine )


-Philip Marshall