Merry Christmas from Maine! WW&F Fireman Dan Malkowski braves the sub-freezing air as he wrestles the big spout on the Sheepscot Water Tank into position to fill the cistern on Locomotive #9, which is preparing to take the 2PM edition of the museum's Christmas Train north to Sea Lyon Farm.
As in the past, the WW&F continues to run special Christmas Trains during the holiday season, but the format has changed in the past couple of years. Originally, these trains were run at a single-day event, called "Victorian Christmas", which was free to the public. That was a great event until a combination of word-of-mouth and social media sharing resulted in the operation becoming a bit overwhelmed with more demand than the trains could handle. In 2022, this is now a ticketed event, which is run over the course of 3 weekends, to increase the capacity and eliminate the long lines and parking issues that resulted from the popularity of the original, one-day event. Today, the trains run all the way to Top-of-the-Mountain, where horse-drawn wagons pick up the patrons and take them to Sea Lyon Farm. There, the patrons will find all manner of things to entertain them and they can even purchase a Christmas Tree, which the railroad will transport on a special, extra train. So far, the new format seems to be popular with passengers and on this particular day, the Christmas Tree Extra did bring back quite a number of trees for patrons, which the volunteers happily assisted them in loading onto their vehicles.
Landscape photography is difficult due to the challenge of combining good light and good scenery. Good railroad photography enters another level of complexity since it requires the first two while there is a train in view.
