Historic Photos

[Ed Lecuyer]

David Chase sent these photos he found online and wanted to share on the forum.

[Jeff Schumaker]

Anyone have an idea what year the photos were taken?

Jeff

[Philip Marshall]

"The Lightning Freight taking a rest after 15 minutes"?

This is just a hunch, but where on the railroad was 15 minutes north of Wiscasset? Maybe along the Sheepscot River between Wiscasset and Sheepscot, south of the first 218 crossing?

[James Patten]

I think it says "miles" not "minutes".  That would be somewhere up in Whitefield.

Otherwise, one of the pictures looks a lot like Stationhouse brook, south of Cross road.  But I recall only one derailment there.

[Benjamin Richards]

I think it says, "Taking a rest after going 15 mi an hr."

Miles an hour. That would be speed. Plenty fast enough to derail given what we know about the historic ROW conditions.

[Allan Fisher]

I agree with James - this wreck happened along the Sheepscot River in lower Whitefield in the mid to late 1920s. Right up until the end, WW&F trains ran at 30-35 mph when the engineer (Earl) felt conditions were right.

[Wayne Laepple]

There seems to be quite a bit of freshly-sawn lumber along the ROW in the first photo. Would a northbound train be taking that north from the sawmill in the yard at Wiscasset? Or was this a southbound train carrying lumber to the port? Obviously, it's along the Sheepscot River, but are we seeing a southbound train, or perhaps a reversed negative print?

[john d Stone]

The Portland Forney, 2 or 3 I can't tell, still has an acetylene headlight. They both got electric lights towards the end of 1921.

[Mike Fox]

There seems to be quite a bit of freshly-sawn lumber along the ROW in the first photo. Would a northbound train be taking that north from the sawmill in the yard at Wiscasset? Or was this a southbound train carrying lumber to the port? Obviously, it's along the Sheepscot River, but are we seeing a southbound train, or perhaps a reversed negative print?

Those look like replacement ties to me.

[Mike the Choochoo Nix]

Definitely ties, in the last photo you can see that they rebuilt a stretch of track. Looks like it was a major derailment, big enough to make the news. Some research would be in order, wish that I lived closer.

M. Nix.