Refuge from the rain in a Portland railway carriage

Inside the quaint little railway carriages at Portland,
where we took refuge from the rain. 

I am looking at pictures of places I visited just over four weeks ago on the TV news and find it hard to believe them. Hurricane Sandy has transformed the places I visited. It seems amazing to me that it is only just four weeks ago, Arcadia berthed in Portland, Maine. The weather was colder in Portland and also extremely wet, so we wore waterproofs and took umbrellas. We made for the little narrow gauge railway which went a little way along the coast. Being very wet, we caught the first train out, which was pulled by a little diesel engine which looked like an adapted tractor. it had an upright exhaust pipe with a little round hinged cover which popped up and down to release the fumes. The carriages were equally quaint, with old fashioned hinged seats you could turn to face the other way. We joined the local families for the trip up and back and then looked round the small museum on the site. The rain looked set in for the day, so we went in search of a coffee and found a Starbucks, where our wet clothes gently steamed and we warmed our hands on the steaming cups. The poet Longfellow was born and brought up in Portland and we went to look for his house.