Tuesday, May 8, 2012

WW&F Completes Narrow Gauge Replica Cream Car

(Via Trains.com newsletter)

SHEEPSCOT, Me. – A replica of a cream car once used by an on-line industry of the Wiscasset Waterville & Farmington Railway, one of the legendary Maine “two-footers,” is nearly complete.
During the WW&F Railway Museum’s annual Spring Work Session, volunteers assembled a pair of arch-bar trucks, completed interior painting, and lettered the car, which was built from scratch in the museum’s shops over the winter months.

The original car was rebuilt in the WW&F’s shops from a 1905 Portland Co. car in the first decade of the 20th century to transport cans of cream picked up along the railway’s line for delivery to the Turner Centre Dairy operation in Wiscasset. It was insulated with sawdust and fitted with both an ice bin and a stove to maintain an even temperature year-round. The windows were added later so an attendant could ride inside the car to collect and drop off cream cans at stations along the line.

The replica car, while fully operational, will be placed at the public wharf in Wiscassett (site of the Turner Centre Dairy) with display materials about the Turner Centre Dairying Association and the WW&F Railway and its museum.

During the work session, in addition to work on the cream car, volunteers also performed a variety of track maintenance projects, prepared footers for a new restroom building, continued restoration of locomotive No. 9 (Portland 1891) and reroofed the Sheepscot station. More than 75 volunteers participated.

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