Coaling the old fashioned way....one shovel at a time. With the WW&F Museum's bucket loader broken this day, Engineman Bill Piche and Ashcat Joe Fox coal Locomotive #9 the old fashioned way....one shovel at a time. As several of us watched this operation, we couldn't help but imagine this being a re-enactment of a Monson Railroad scene, as the Monson was perhaps the most primitive of Maine's 2-foot railroads in just about every regard. Interestingly, none of the Maine 2-footers ever had anything approaching a mechanical coal tipple. The small, 24" gauge Forneys didn't hold all that much coal and were typically loaded using pulley and bucket system, so what you see here is not all that far off the mark. As noted above, under normal circumstances, the museum's locomotives are coaled using a small tractor with a front-end loader mounted on it.
