Portland’s Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Company and Museum preserves vehicles from railways whose tracks were only two feet apart. The small dimensions make an immediate impression, especially when a restored coach stands beside people boarding it. These railways carried real passengers, freight and supplies across rural Maine. The Portland waterfront operation gives surviving equipment a setting where its scale and construction can be experienced as part of a working train.
The collection includes several kinds of vehicle from different railroads, including locomotives, coaches, combines, cabooses and freight cars. Compare a coach with a combine, which divided one car between different jobs such as carrying passengers and handling baggage. On lines with modest traffic, combining functions could help a railroad meet several demands with fewer vehicles. Freight cars also reveal the challenge of transferring goods between two-foot tracks and standard-gauge trains, whose cars could travel on separate networks.
One notable engine is Bridgton & Saco River No. 7, built by Baldwin in 1913. It and sister engine No. 8 worked into the closing years of the successor Bridgton & Harrison line. No. 7 later spent decades at Edaville in Massachusetts before returning to Maine. A lengthy restoration brought it back to service in 2018. That history connects the equipment with two generations of preservation, first at a Massachusetts attraction and later in the state where it originally worked.
Portland’s rides follow the waterfront by Casco Bay. Watch the proportions of the equipment and the way it moves through the landscape, then use the museum’s roster to trace each vehicle’s original home. A piece preserved here may have spent its working life far from Portland. Some engines appear on selected dates, and collections can include equipment kept away from the boarding area.
Visitor information
Researched November 2026.
Sources
More railroad museums in Maine
- Boothbay Railway Village Museum — Boothbay: Railway village and living-history museum
- Downeast Scenic Railroad — Preservation Collection — Ellsworth: Operating railroad preservation collection
- Oakfield Railroad Museum — Oakfield: Depot and railroad history museum
- Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes Railroad — Phillips: Narrow-gauge railroad museum and operating collection
- Wiscasset Waterville and Farmington Railway Museum — Alna: Narrow-gauge railroad museum and operating collection
- All 6 railroad museums and sites in Maine
Keep exploring
- All heritage sites — museums, stations and landmarks
- Northeast — the trains you can ride in the region