![]() We dropped down the mountain through clouds and rain, able to see almost nothing. We reboarded for the descent after just 30 minutes at the summit. We could have waited for a later train down, but we wanted to be sure of seats (if you return on the same train you came on, seats are guaranteed). We passed Sky Line Switch, met a down-bound train (with the locomotive named Great Gulf in charge), crossed the Appalachian Trail, marked with piles of stones, and finally ended our hour-and-a-quarter climb by swinging around a craggy knoll and coming to a stop in front of Summit House. Amid this Arctic landscape we entered Jacob's Ladder, an extraordinary stretch of railroad built on high, curving trestling, its 37.41 percent grade the steepest on the line. Spurred by this anomaly, passengers in our coach stood in the aisle and, amid general hilarity, tried to walk, tilted forward as if by fun-house magic.Īs we approached timberline, trees thinned, then disappeared entirely. The unbroken steepness of the grade is so perplexing to the senses that this little shack, which is actually level, seemed to be listing to the point of collapse. ![]() We soon passed Halfway House, a shelter for skiers and hikers. 4, Summit, with Charlie Teague, the railway's president, at the throttle.Īfter a brief pause to take water, we rattled into motion. Running ahead of us the entire way would be No. 2, Ammonoosuc (the Cog's oldest operating steamer, built in 1876), waiting in the siding with a downbound coach. Half a mile along was Waumbek tank, where we found locomotive No. We crossed the Ammonoosuc River and began to climb in earnest through the broad swath that was first cut in the dense forest over a century ago. Shortly after we boarded, the locomotive erupted into action and we were on our way to the summit, full speed ahead - which meant at a brisk walk. 1, dating from 1869, is touted as the oldest operating coach in the world. The wooden coaches - some with their original arched windows and cream paint scheme restored - are more comfortable to ride in than the newer models, since their windows open for ventilation and viewing. There are also five wooden coaches, which carry 48 passengers each, in service. 3, built in 1883 and named Base Station, and a relatively new (1961) 56-seat aluminum coach, one of two such operated by the railway. They came rocketing down the cog rail at hairraising speeds (the record being 2 minutes and 43 seconds for the three-and-a-half-mile run), until the boards were outlawed in 1930. One of the most arresting exhibits was a device called a devil's shingle -a 3-by-1-foot sliding board that workmen once used to return to the base station. A vertical-boilered locomotive, it resembles a cruet that might hold peppersauce, hence its name. Built in 1866, it was used in construction of the railway, then entered regular service on it. This locomotive was the Cog Railway's first, and as such was the first mountain-climbing cog locomotive in the world. While waiting to board, I poked through a small museum of Cog Railway memorabilia and examined ''Old Peppersass,'' on display by the depot. For safety, the locomotive always operates on the downhill end of the coach, shoving on the ascent, braking on the return. The device that makes the operation possible is the cog rail, a sort of horizontal ladder in the middle of the track, with rungs that the teeth of the gears aboard locomotive and coach can climb. The average gradient is 25 percent, or one foot up for every four ahead so delicate is the balance among gravity, inertia and force that the addition of another coach would seem to violate the laws of physics. ''Train'' almost seems a misnomer, for the transportation is provided by a single locomotive pushing a single coach. Today trains leave from the base station, called Marshfield for the railway's founder, approximately hourly but more often when demand warrants, every day through Oct. The treeless, boulder-strewn summit is known for its high winds - strong enough to blow lumps of coal off a fireman's scoop as he stokes his locomotive on the ascent -and its fickle weather, said to be the worst in North America. At 6,293 feet above sea level, it is not only the tallest peak in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire's White Mountains, but also the highest in the Northeast. Mount Washington has not changed much in the last century, either.
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