Monday we took a trip over to New Hampshire to The Mount Washington COG Railway. We took the back roads through New Hampshire and the ride was just beautiful. This COG railway is the first mountain-climbing cog railway in the world. Believe it or not the building of this railway was started in 1869. A man by the name of Sylvester Marsh of Littleton, NH designed and built the railway. He got the idea after almost dying on the mountain while climbing with a friend. The weather changes so drastically after a certain elevation that it actually snows on any day of the year. A cog railway is a railroad that is so steep that the engine can't gain traction to pull the grades (this one is a 37.5 % grade! For comparison purposes the max grade for any interstate mountain is 7%!). A third rail is laid between the outer rails that has holes in it that a gear on the locomotive engages thereby preventing any wheel slippage. The railroad runs diesel and steam locomotives, ours was a 600 horspower hydrostatically driven one. The speed up and down varies from 1 to 3 mph. The first pic above was the first engine to pull up the mountain. The second pic does not really do the depth of this mountain justice, but it does show how this railway goes straight up the mountain. The excursion begins at the Marshfield Base Station which is located 2700' above sea level. It takes the train about 40 minutes to climb to an elevation of 6,288'. Once at the top there you can visit a gift shop, snack bar, the Tip Top House and the Mount Washington Observatory and Summit Museum. You can even mail cards postmarked from Mt. Washington. They say on a clear day the view extends all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The day we went up, it was sunny and about 77 degrees at the base station. By the time we got to the top, it was quite cold 52 degrees. Jim and I had brought our rain jackets just in case of rain and we were sure glad we had them. We saw other people who obviously had taken the trip before whip out their winter coats and ski pants. When we got to the snack bar we could smell the aroma of homemade soup. Jim and I were glad to have soup and hot chocolate for our lunch that day to warm us up. We went out to the Observatory but we were enclosed in clouds and could not see anything. The wind was unbelievable. On the way down, it started off cold and by the time we got to the base it was sunny and warm again. It was pretty amazing. The third pic above is of the Omni Mount Washington Resort Hotel. It was beautiful. It too was built in the 1800's. On the ride home, we stopped off at several scenic road spots and Jim did some geocaching. At one of the stops we saw a house out in the middle of a lake built on its own island. It was really neat.
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