That was one of just two such accidents in two centuries of regular service. Amazingly, only one person died, and the rest jumped off with the result of several broken bones. These days, the trip to the summit usually entails (after donning coats and ski caps) a hike around the rocky top, and a trip to the museum and cafeteria, located in a virtual fortress where a weather team spends the whole winter.īack at the bottom, in the railway station, visitors might want to take in the macabre display of a locomotive whose front axel broke in the 1920s during a descent, sending the rig out of control down the mountain. It would be 17 years of very hard labor, and overcoming obstacles legal and material, before Marsh had built the Cog, but in July 1869 “Old Peppersass” - so named because her vertical boiler resembled a pepper sauce bottle - made the first railroad ascent up Mount Washington. ![]() But it was hugely challenging to get materials and workers up the mountain, so once, when Marsh got lost in the fog on a mountain climb, he had some time to think about things, and the idea of the Cog sprang to mind. Since the early 1800s, people from all over had been climbing Mount Washington, and several buildings had appeared. You can’t ride the Cog without learning the history of its creator - a meat-packing magnate from Chicago named Sylvester Marsh, who had more in mind than building a mere amusement ride. The two Pittsburgh fellows who had been pals from youth, reckoned they had ridden every historical recreational railroad in the country, and of course made frequent trips through the rolling hills of the Keystone state on The Pennsylvanian, with its own railroad museum at the site of the famed “Horseshoe Curve” in Altoona. You might pick up an occasional odor of onion rings, but it beats coal smoke so thick it makes your eyes water. About once a year, they said, they left their wives (who didn’t dare ride the Cog) at the shopping mall and got on the steam-driven cog train for an incredibly loud, environmentally incorrect chug-a-lug up a three-mile wooden track on a pitch up to 37 percent in places - anyway, so steep that the trees look like they’re bent nearly to the ground.įor those who do have a cringe reaction to giant clouds of black coal smoke, the Cog does offer rides on comparatively silent biodiesel engines. ![]() On one of the rides, we met a couple of pals from Pittsburgh who wore jeans, identical RR commemorative T shirts, and engineer caps. ![]() Obviously, nostalgia is the idea here, as both railroads ride over America’s original outdoor playground - the White Mountain National Forest.
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