Mount Washington Cog Railway

The Mount Washington Cog Railway, also known as the Cog, is the world's first mountain-climbing cog railway (rack-and-pinion railway). The railway climbs Mount Washington in New Hampshire, United States. It uses a Marsh rack system and both steam and biodiesel-powered locomotives to carry tourists to the top of the mountain. Its track is built to a 4 ft 8 in (1,422 mm) gauge, which is technically a narrow gauge, as it is 1⁄2 inch (13 mm) less than a 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge. It is the second-steepest rack railway in the world, after the Pilatus Railway in Switzerland, with an average grade of over 25% and a maximum grade of 37%. The railway is approximately 3 miles (5 km) long and ascends Mount Washington's western slope, beginning at an elevation of approximately 2,700 feet (820 m) above sea level and ending just short of the mountain's summit peak of 6,288 feet (1,917 m). The train ascends the mountain at 2.8 miles per hour (4.5 km/h) and descends at 4.6 mph (7.4 km/h). Steam locomotives take approximately 65 minutes to ascend and 40 minutes to descend, while the biodiesel engines can go up in as little as 36 minutes. Most of the Mount Washington Cog Railway is in Thompson and Meserve's Purchase, with the part of the railway nearest to Mount Washington's summit being in Sargent's Purchase.

History

The railway was built by Sylvester Marsh who grew up in Campton. Marsh came up with the idea while climbing the mountain in 1852. His plan was treated as insane. Local tradition says that the state legislature voted permission based on a consensus that harm resulting from operating it was no issue – since the design was attempting the impossible – but benefits were guaranteed. He was putting up $5,000 of his own money, and that, plus whatever else he could raise, would be spent locally, including building the Fabyan House hotel at nearby Fabyan Station to accommodate the expected tourists. The railway is sometimes called "Railway to the Moon", because one state legislator remarked during the proceedings that Marsh should be given a charter, not merely up Mount Washington, but also to the moon. Marsh obtained a charter for the road on June 25, 1858, but the American Civil War prevented any action until May 1866. He developed a prototype locomotive and a short demonstration section of track, then found investors, forming the Mount Washington Railway Company in the spring of 1866, and started construction. The route closely followed a mountain trail that had been established earlier in the century by Ethan Allen Crawford. Despite the railroad's incomplete state, the first paying customers started riding on August 14, 1868, and the construction reached the summit in July 1869. The early locomotives – represented today by the restored display locomotive, #1 Old Peppersass – all had vertical boilers, like many stationary steam engines of the time; the boilers were mounted to the locomotives' frames with twin trunnions, allowing them to pivot as the locomotive and coach climbed the grade, permitting gravity to always keep the boiler vertically oriented, no matter what the gradient of the track. Later designs introduced horizontal boilers, slanted so that they remain close to horizontal on the steeply graded track. In August 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant visited New England to escape the heat of summer in Washington, D.C. During his tour he rode the cog railway to the top of Mount Washington.

Running the railway The Cog has been in continuous operation since 1869, with service interruptions only during the World Wars. After Marsh died in 1884, control of the Cog passed to the Concord & Montreal Railroad, which ran it until 1889 when the Boston & Maine Railroad took over. From 1868 to 1910, the locomotives were fired with wood. In 1910, the railway converted to using coal for all its locomotives. Henry N. Teague, a hotel executive, bought the Cog in 1931. Known as Col. Teague, an honorary title, he died in October 1951. Operational control passed to Arthur S. Teague, who had become vice president and general manager of the railway prior to his service in World War II, while ownership passed to Dartmouth College, Henry N. Teague's alma mater. The younger Teague, who actually was a colonel and was highly decorated during his military service, was a protégé of the elder Teague, but the two were not related. Arthur S. Teague bought the railway from Dartmouth in 1962. After he died in 1967, ownership of the railway passed to his wife, Ellen Crawford Teague, who ran the Cog as the world's first woman president of a railway. In 1983, Mrs. Teague sold the railway to a group of New Hampshire businessmen. From 1986 to 2017, the Cog Railway was controlled and owned by Wayne Presby and Joel Bedor of Littleton, New Hampshire. The Bedor and Presby families also owned the Mount Washington Hotel and Resort in Bretton Woods for the period 1991–2006. In 1995, the railway appointed Charles Kenison as general manager. These individuals were responsible for a complete revitalization of the railroad, with the assistance of Al LaPrade, a mechanical engineer whose career began at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. In the summer of 2008, the Cog introduced its first diesel locomotive. The Great Recession and the 2000s energy crisis led to fewer passengers, and the Cog sought to cut costs with the diesel, which could make three round trips for the cost of one steam train round trip. In December 2016, the owner of the Cog proposed building a 35-room hotel along the line, about one mile (1.6 km) below the summit and two miles (3.2 km) above the station, to be opened in 2019 for the 150th anniversary of the train. However, the proposal drew opposition due to its location in the alpine zone of the mountain and was shelved.

In April 2017, the Bedor family sold its interest in the railway to Wayne Presby, the only remaining member of the original group, which had purchased the railway in 1983. Presby assumed direct management control of the railway in December 2017. In 2021, the railway completed two of the largest improvement projects in its history. The existing 25 lb/yd (12.4 kg/m) rail was replaced with 100 lb/yd (49.6 kg/m) rail and a new 34,000 sq ft (3,159 m2) maintenance facility was completed. The new facility enabled the railway to resume winter operations in 2020. During the winter, the railway operates its trains to Waumbek Station at an elevation of approximately 3,800 feet (1,158 m).

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