The Mount Washington Cog Railway is the world's first mountain-climbing cog railway (rack-and-pinion railway). The railway is still in operation, climbing Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA. It uses a Marsh rack system and one or two steam locomotives and four biodiesel powered locomotives to carry tourists to the top of the mountain.
It is the second steepest rack railway in the world with an average grade of over 25% and a maximum grade of 37.41%. The railway is approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) long and ascends Mt. 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). It takes approximately 65 minutes to ascend and 40 minutes to descend although the diesel can go up in as little as 37 minutes.
Most of the Mount Washington Cog Railway is in Thompson and Meserve's Purchase, with the part of the railway nearest to Mt. Washington's summit being in Sargent's Purchase.
Read more about Mount Washington Cog Railway: History, Mechanical Design, Modern Operations, Environmental Concerns
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“If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, in Truro.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... women are more quiet. They don’t feel called to mount a barrel and harangue by the hour every time they imagine they have produced an idea.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“Mrs. Sneed and her daughter, Miss Austine Sneed, are visiting us—Washington correspondents of excellent character.... We are much interested in their accounts of Washington affairs. Nothing could be further from our desire than to return to Washington and again enter its whirl, either socially or politically, but we are interested in seeing Washington with the roof off.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)