I took these pics 7/11/00. I was driving by, and had a digital camera in the car. I only had a few minutes, and snapped these images. This curious structure is set back from the tracks a bit, but is right where Nobscot Depot should be. It looks like it was used as a garage, as evidenced by the pavement going right up to the side wall. (I also made mental notes as to the placement of cement and stone in the ground near this ediface.) As you can see from picture # 2, the windows have recently been broken. While this is unfortunate, it allowed me the chance to stick the camera inside and take picture number 3. (Note the folding chairs stacked neatly on the right. What's up with that?)

So is this Nobscot? Why the two doors with dormers over them? You can see from the interior shot that a door has been boarded up trackside, but which way did this face originally?

Gary Lapointe's site lists this as a replacement depot for the original, but I am not convinced that it was a depot. Having stood here myself and taken these pics, I think it was. But I am not sold. (The page is here, and a pic is here.) It also says that this was moved. That part I will go along with.

A big clue. If you click here, you will see a picture of the original depot. Notice the shadows and keep in mind that the tracks run north-south. Note the time of year, and you can deduce that the depot in the pic is on the west side of the tracks. That being the case, the cement and stone I noticed in the ground today is from the original depot. Which means the building in my pictures is right behind where the couple in the black and white photo are standing. This is all quite interesting. So what happened to the depot in the black and white image? Did it burn? Or was it torn down after passenger service ended in 1933? The huge depot one stop north at S. Sudbury was torn down in the fifties, and a shed type structure took its place for passengers on the Central Mass, which shared this station. (Central Mass passenger service remained until 1971, and this little replacement depot still stands. Click here to see it.)

The little depot in my pics is consistent in size with the moved but extant North Sudbury depot, which now sits rotting on Pantry Rd. in Sudbury. It is also consistent with the pic of a little replacement depot at Sudbury Center which I took a slide of in 1978, when I went to Framingham State. (I had no IDEA what a cool thing I was photographing at the time- it just looked interesting. Somewhere I have that slide, and I hope it turns up, as this depot is long gone.) These depots where on the same line, the ex Framingham-Lowell, New Haven, now Conrail/CSX.

Anyone with further info is invited to e-mail me here. I am very curious as to what this building is all about. I would LOVE to see a picture of this little building in use as a depot.

Click here for Gary Lapointe's wonderful "Railroad Depots in Massachusetts".

-Steve Fisk

This just in............ Click here to learn of a new development to the mystery. It would seem that the riddle is solved.