Re: WW&F RR #9

My understanding is that a benefit of the Forney patent was that the truck under the tender end did double duty when running tender-first ... it supported the tender and it piloted the locomotive around curves. A couple of years ago, when I took my wife & younger daughter for a ride on the WW&F, a very gracious engineer offered me a ride in the cab, and from that experience I am fairly certain that the locomotive provides better visibility over the tender than around the boiler. And, of course, running tender-first doesn't transmit as much stress through the boiler, since the main load is attached directly to the driving chassis.

So, why did Maine railroads end up running those locomotives boiler-first?