Folks,

For the 7th year in a row, I attended the annual Victorian Christmas event at the Wiscasset Waterville & Farmington Railway Museum. As you have seen from previous threads, this year's event was unique, featuring two steam locomotives for the first time. WW&F #9, the "ultimate barn find" was finally in service after years of loving restoration work by the museum crew. To say she is beautiful is an understatement. This is a Smithsonian-quality restoration....except this engine actually runs. The fact that her introduction to service has been so smooth is testament to the incredible attention to detail on the part of the restoration crew.

Normally, when I visit for this Christmas event, I try to capture a little of everything that occurs, but this year (please forgive me), my focus was on train operations. There's a new girl in town and I wanted some decent pictures of her. The weather this day was all over the map. Mother nature could not quite make up her mind. One minute we had dark clouds, the next minute the sun was out, and a few minutes after that, it was snowing. Fortunately, the trains made 18 runs this day, so I was lucky enough to get a few keepers. Here's a small album of what train operations looked like on Saturday, December 19th, 2015. Click on any of the photos to enlarge them. Click in the upper right corner to go full screen and page though them if you like.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/112261457@N06/sets/72157662677166485/with/23532419489/

/Kevin Madore

Thanks, Kevin. It was a magnificent open-house that touched thousands.