Some photos taken yesterday, Saturday, April 17th.
Yesterday's first
Work Saturday event was the "Head Tide Haircut." In this first photo, Dave Buczkowski leads a safety review with volunteers at Head Tide before work started. Ultimately 9 volunteers joined the effort (10 including young Johnny Piwowarski). My apologies for not catching everyone's name.
While others worked on brush clearing, Brian Whitney handled the chain saw, cutting down dead and fallen trees as well as large saplings. Not very good quality, but this photo shows a few things early on: The recently opened vista of the Head Tide Church on the left; Brian cleaning up the remains of a large white pine; and some the brush on the right-of-way that needed clean-up.
A later in the day reverse view looking north on the ROW toward Head Tide Road, showing volunteers busy cleaning up the ROW. The red Cape on the left at the corner of Head Tide Road and Route 218 can be seen in historic railway photos.
In the Head Tide cut, Brian cut up two fallen trees blocking the ROW trail. We're looking south, toward Trout Brook.
The reverse view, looking north through the cut.
The end result late morning: The ROW trail cleared, looking south to north in these two views.
Dave (foreground) attends a few last details.
At Sheepscot, Mike Fox replaced a hydraulic hose on the large forklift. Here he refills the hydraulic fluid.
Steam trains were operating for the public and a charter. Here's the crew: (left-to-right) Conductor Ed Lecuyer, brakeman Dan Malkowski and John Robinson. Not shown is engineer Wes Carpenter and fireman Bryce Weeks.
A view of the charter returning back to Sheepscot, near the Sheepscot north yard switch. Consist south to north was WW&F caboose No. 320, WW&F coach/combine No. 8 and Maine Locomotive & Machine Works open coach No. 130.
Reverse view shortly after.
In his Thursday post, Steve Lennox noted:
* New metal blue flag signals, made and placed on Machine shop leads (Leon and grandson [Jared]).
Here's a poor photo showing the signals installed on two of the four shop leads at the fouling points. I regret I didn't grab a photo when Brendan later showed me one set up as active.
The size difference between our No. 52 and Maine Narrow Gauge's Bridgton & Saco River No. 8 struck me, so hopefully this photo shows the comparison.
As always, this only captures a portion of the work done Saturday, missing among other volunteer work the gift shop and lunch crews.
