Mount Washington Cog Railway, New Hampshire - 2000

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In operation since 1869, the Mount Washington Cog railway is the oldest mountain-climbing cog railway in the world. It was conceived and built as a tourist attraction, and never served a commercial/industrial function like the many logging railroads that have been preserved and/or restored. Trains ascend to a visitors' center at the 6,288-foot summit of the mountain, taking about three hours for the round trip. It's pricey ($59 adult, $39 child, $54 senior), but I thought it was worth every penny.
Winter trains ($31) only ascend to the water tank at Waumbek, 4,000 feet. In winter, the summit has the most severe weather in the eastern U.S., and you definitely wouldn't want to go there.

The locomotive that initiated service on the railway in 1869

Birdsell steam traction engine of the type that powered farms, sawmills and other industries in the early 1900s

Because of their internal design, locomotive boilers cannot be operated safely under load when severely tilted. The cog railway locomotives are built with the boiler sitting nose-down, so that it's nearly level when ascending the mountain.

The wheels only carry the weight and guide the locomotive on the rails; propulsion is entirely by a toothed cog that engages the rack between the rails. Gear reduction results in furious reciprocating and spinning producing not much forward speed but lots of tractive effort.

Filling fire extinguishers - when you see the embers that escape the spark arresters on the ascent, you understand why they carry the fire extinguishers.
The water for the tenders & fire extinguishers is captured from a stream flowing down the mountain.

Leaks don't cost money; the water is free, and the pressure comes from gravity.

See the bright red spot on the lower right? That's one of many embers that rain down from the stack when working up the mountain.

I don't have any photos from the summit; by the time we got there, it was fogged in so thick that I could barely see my feet. Lines painted on the pathways help people find their way to the visitors' center when it's fogged in.

They use a front-end loader to fill the coal dock, but from there on, coaling is pretty much a manual operation with emphasis on filling every nook and cranny on the tender.

Maintenance shops are about a half mile down the hill from the visitors' center and boarding area.

No roundhouse or turntable here; a transfer table moves equipment to shop and car barn bays.

Some tractor collectors would love to get their hands on this vintage Terratrac crawler.

This old building was in pretty precarious condition. I didn't venture far inside to get these photos, because I feared the slightest disturbance might bring it down on me.

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