In addition to hauling raw materials, finished products and workers to and from the textile mills, Atlantic Shore Line Railway's electric locomotives delivered coal to power the mills.
Schooners delivered coal to the pier at Cape Porpoise, where the trolleys picked it up and took it to the mills..
It was also hauled from the Sanford-Springvale depot where it had been deposited by the Boston and Maine Railroad.
Once the coal was at the Sanford Mills, laborers shoveled it by hand into boilers that dwarfed them.
