In The East: A Short, Rugged, Jolting Climb

The Mount Washington line was built between 1866 and 1869 up the slope of New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet the highest mountain in the Northeast. The rise from the base to the top station is approximately 3,600 feet, and the average grade is 24.4 percent. At its steepest section it reaches a fearsome 37.5 percent; most main-line railroads rarely climb much over 2 percent and prefer to keep grades at half that. To overcome the steep slope, a multiple-toothed rack is placed in the center of the track. A cog or tooth gear driven by the locomotive meshes in the rack. The wheels of the locomotive guide and support the engine but play no part in driving or braking the train the way they would on a conventional locomotive. The engines are short and fat. They have four cylinders that drive a jackshaft. Attached to this shaft is a small gear, whose teeth mesh with those of the large cogwheel. The cogwheel is attached to the axle, which also supports the carrying wheels. While the cylinders work furiously to and fro, the geared-down cogwheel turns gently, pushing the engine and car along more slowly than most men walk. Hence the three-mile ascent requires an hour and 15 minutes.

The Mount Washington railway was built with more promotional difficulties than engineering ones. It was chartered in 1858, three years before a carriage toll road reached the summit. Investors were cool to the idea, perhaps because state lawmakers had ridiculed the project. Might as well build a railroad to the moon, they scoffed. Yet local settlers had been climbing the mountain since 1642. Some lost their lives because of falls or the notorious stormy climate. Sylvester Marsh, a retired businessman, had climbed the mountain and was convinced tourists would pay a good price to gain the summit if only they could avoid the climb on foot. But this was New England, and Yankees did not invest their hard-earned money casually. Marsh decided to answer the skeptics by building a demonstration line. He bought 17,000 acres of land and began construction of a short test track. A small engine, nicknamed Peppersass because its boiler so clearly resembled a steak sauce bottle, was hauled through the deep forest to the base station. On August 29, 1866, Peppersass put on a convincing public demonstration that Marsh’s plan was feasible. The skeptics continued to grumble, but a few converts offered support and construction got under way in earnest. Even so, progress was slow, and the line did not open all the way to the top until July 3, 1869. A visit by President Ulysses S. Grant and his family soon after the opening gave the line a much-needed boost. Most tourists found it too remote, for no railroad came anywhere near until 1876. Those that suffered through the rough stagecoach ride there often found the weather uncooperative. On a clear day you can see a hundred miles into Maine or Vermont or even New York, but Mount Washington has few clear days. Once you get beyond the tree line, the rocky slopes are about as inviting as the Arctic. The clouds and gloom reminded me of northern Scotland. The average wind registers 37 mph, and the strongest ever recorded on the face of the earth was a traumatic 231 mph on Mount Washington in 1934. Serious snow begins in October, and the average fall is 177 inches a year.

For more information about the Mount Washington Cog Railway, call 800-922-8825 or visit www.thecog.com on the Web.