Monday, November 14, 2011

operating since 1869 - the Mt Washington cog wheel railway, New Hampshire


The world's first mountain-climbing cog railway (a.k.a. rack-and-pinion railway), the Mount Washington Cog Railway uses a Marsh rack system to climb the 6,288 ft (1,917 metre) high Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

The line begins at an altitude of approximately 2,700 feet (820 m) above sea level, thus ascends 3600 ft in its 3-mile length (1.1 km in 4.8 km) to reach the summit of Mt Washington. This makes it the second steepest rack railway in the world with an average gradient of 25% and a maximum gradient of 37.41%.

The railway still uses one or two steam locomotives as well as four bio-diesels. It travels faster going down than going up, as you might expect: ascent speed is 2.8 miles per hour (4.5 km/h), descent is 4.6 mph (7.4 km/h), although the diesels can go up at the descent speed. At this rate it takes approximately 65 minutes to ascend and 40 minutes to descend.

Most of the Mt Washington Cog Railway is in Thompson and Meserve's Purchase, located near Bretton Woods, NH. website

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