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"The Ghost Train" By Henry A. Willard III
Recollections of the Gauge Railroad at Nantucket and other Memories ABOUT 1909 MY FATHER took me as a boy to the Main Street crossing by the Killen Fuel Company office. Frank Leial, the kind fireman, would give me a ride to the end of the line at the steamboat dock. It was a real thrill to hear the ding-dong of the old bell as it came to town from 'Sconset. I believe the daughters of Mr. Leial are now on the island. A curious coincidence occurred last summer when Harry Gordon, Rev. Harry Longley and I recall riding on the Nantucket Central 63 years ago before it was removed for shipment during WWI to the AEF to France. The crew that ran the line was Billy Sandsbury, Superintendent, Hendricks, engineer. "Rang" Dunham was flagman at the Orange Street crossing. It was here the only fatality occurred in the summer of '17 when a span of horses driven by a man named Dodge was struck by the locomotive coming to town. Peter Grant was crossing guard at Washington Street by Commercial Wharf. It is our recollections of going to 'Sconset in the summer of 1915 with my brother and sister and our old nurse, Patsy, on the train to the Tucker Cottage, "Tuckernuck", Mr. Cowles Tucker gave a magician show for the children present at Helen Tucker's Birthday party. In the tragic and terrible crash in the Knickerbocker Theatre caused by the blizzard of unprecedented snow on the roof when 98 people lost their lives in Washington D.C. My father took me to see it roped-off about a week later when I was a freshman at college. The snow was piled high 6 or 7 feet around the perimeter of the building. Going back to the train, there was an odd baggage car rectangular in shape. We have a picture of this at Nantucket at Main Street. There was a contraption called the "Bug and Birdcage" two open small cars ran that one summer. Also, there was a motor car that vibrated about that time, 1907, so that had to be removed after a short run. There was a special or extra train that ran to the fair grounds in August when the Nantucket Agricultural Society sponsored the county fair. What a pity it was abandoned to the limbo! The railroad at first ran to Surfside before the tracks were removed to mid island. About ten years after the abandonment of the Nantucket Central my brother and I flew for the first time in a Stinson Detroiter airplane with pilot Wickford at the controls. It was a beautiful day and the visibility was unlimited. Curiously, we landed at a very primitive run way cut out of Bayberry near where the old road bed of the rail line was located at Tom Nevers. "When the wind is in the southard, and fog comes rolling in like a ghostly wrath of sin" beyond sing the seas perhaps the old spirits of the passengers will come back from spring land to ride the old train after more than half a century, who knows!
