A REAL JEWEL FROM THE PAST

The below card, postdated 1903, was sent to Mrs. Anna Nussy of Nantucket, Mass. The photo is of the Sconset Limited, a rather grandiose label for an eight-wheeled contraption.

left click to enlarge

The Nantucket Railroad was a 3 ft gauge narrow gauge railroad on Nantucket. The railroad linked the town of Nantucket with the town of Siasconset. Built in 1881, the line closed in 1917, with the track and rolling stock sent to France as part of the Allied forces of the First World War.

The above photo is apparently the only surviving one of the Fairbanks-Morse 4wPM gasoline powered railcar that they claim could carry ten passengers. The line had four other locomotives to service the roughly nine-mile-long railroad:

A Baldwin Locomotive Works 4-4-0 Originally built for the Danville, Olney and Ohio River Railroad and scrapped in scrapped 1901;

A Sconset Mason Machine Works 0-4-4 Purchased from the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn Railroad 1888:

A Hinkley Locomotive Works 4-4-0 Originally built 1879 for the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn Railroad; purchased 1901

And an Alco 2-4-4 purchased in 1910.

Siasconset (also 'Sconset, Oggawame, Sconset, Seconset, Siasconsett, or Sweseckechi) is a village in eastern Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States. Its elevation is 52 feet. Although it is unincorporated, it has a post office, with the ZIP code of 02564.

SIASCONSET: Algonquian term for “place of great bones.” Si from missi, meaning “great;” ascon from askon, meaning “horn or bone”