WW&F Railway Museum: Rail History Outside Portland
About an hour north of Portland along the Maine coast are the towns of Alna and Wiscasset, two towns that would have served as a rail connection from Maine into Quebec if the Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington (WW&F) Railway had been finished. Unfortunately, the railroads that eventually led to the founding of the WW&F Railway Museum never managed to connect the state with its northern neighbors.
Founded in 1854, the railroads that would eventually form the Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington Railway Company stalled in construction efforts until June 1894, when they were able to build the 44 miles between Wiscasset and Albion. Despite this push, the line was never able to reach Quebec due to the Maine Central stop at Burnham Junction.
In 1985, Harry Percival bought a lot of railway land from the Winter Scientific Institutes, which had owned the railroad’s assets from the late 1930s on. Percival then spent several years building connections to collect railroad stock from where it had been sold in the late 1930s. He then went to the state to incorporate a Wiscasset and Quebec Railroad to restore a small portion of the line; the state of Maine then told Percival that the original W&Q, a precursor to the WW&F had never been declared abandoned. Thus, Percival held a stockholders’ meeting, and brought a 100-year-old company back into operation.
Today, the museum consists of a roughly three-mile rail line running from Sheepscot Station at milepost 4.8 to milepost 7.3 on the original track path to Albion. The track also goes over Humason Brook Trestle, the last remaining trestle bridge on the WW&F’s right of way, and through Alna Station at milepost 6.4.
In the 1990s, during the original restoration push, a replica of the original Sheepscot Station was built in Alna, along with an engine house/car shop and an associated yard. Shortly afterward, a replica of the freight shed that stood at Weeks Mills was added, and the section house that served as a station there in later years was rebuilt on the property.
When the trains are running between Memorial Day and Columbus Day, visitors to the museum are treated to an experience out of the early 1900s. Volunteers use the same system as the original WW&F Railway to guide trains through the short three-mile line, and allow visitors to witness what the average rider of the line would have seen in the railway’s heyday.
HelloPortlandMaine Tip: The museum gift shop offers a host of railroad history books for the interested enthusiast, including a tome on the narrow-gauge railways in Maine. The gift shop is open year-round, even when the trains don’t run. The full schedule for the museum is on the WW&F website.
Posted on Apr 4, 2011 by Matt Delman
