Photo by Bonnie Alexander
For twenty five or thirty years the WK&S maintenance shop consisted of a few lean-tos and a small shack built from recycled garage doors. All locomotive and rolling stock maintenance was performed out in the weather. That began to change in 1996 when a new 50' x 100' maintenance building was erected. The new building includes a machine shop and carpentry shop plus two 100' long equipment bays. Near the end of 2004 a new construction project was begun to bring track to the new building. By the end of 2006 the track project was complete. Finally, locomotives and rolling stock can be maintained and restored in from the winter weather!

Photo by Dave Thomas
In the earliest days of WK&S operations there was no well or other watering means at Kempton. Locomotives were stored, serviced and watered on the passing siding at Wanamaker. This photo shows #2 taking water at Wanamaker. Note the primitive pipe and hose arrangement fed from a pump down by the creek.

Photo by Dave Thomas
Same scene as above with #250 in the foreground. Note that neither locomotive is fully assembled. These photos were probably taken in the spring of 1964 before the beginning of the operating season.

Back at Kempton, this picture shows the original WK&S "shops". This picture even predates the garage door shop shown below. Note the coal dock is still under construction and the pit track is no where to be seen. All of these sheds were relocated former Reading Company outbuildings. The oil shed on the left still stands to this day, well preserved by its contents.

The two pictures above show the old "garage door" shop before and after the new shop was erected. What a difference! Maintenance crews would soon move into the new shop and raze the old. The old shop's outline can still be seen immediately north of the coal dock.

Here's the new shop without track from around 2003.

The coal dock is between the new shop and the tracks. The old shop was located to the right of the dock.

Photo by Rob Piligian
At the beginning of September, 2004, WK&S crews began the long awaited task of building track into the shop building. For details on this exciting project, go to the Kempton Yard Page.

October 2004 - a new "storage building" was added beside the shop.