Everett,
As a Maine Two-Foot fan I'm speechless at this discovery. Holy cow.
Of all the bells that could have been to find its way to Long Leaf, you have the original bell from arguably the most elegant and beloved lost engine in the Maine narrow gauge world. That's simply amazing, bordering on the unimaginable.
I'm glad that a small part of the 24 has survived into preservation*, even if the bell itself apparently never made it to Maine with the rest of the engine. (One wonders which bell the 24 ended up with if not its own!)
(*Required footnote: the 24 was famously purchased for preservation in 1935 by railfan Robert Sawyer but ended up being scrapped anyway in 1937, supposedly due to the property taxes on the shed he built to store the engine in Phillips, as tragically unlikely as that sounds.)
-Philip Marshall
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2019 03:52PM by philip.marshall.