The Mt.Washington Cog Railway
Among New England's historic railroads, this one in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA, is surely the most spectacular . Mount Washington is the highest mountain in the area (1917 m) and was visited by lots of tourists already in the last century. The hike up to the summit is strenuous and not for everybody. So very early the idea came up to built a transportation for tourists. At that time, it could only be a steam railroad, and now it is one of the oldest railroads of this kind in the world. We visited it in 1990, when it was already more than 120 years in continuous operation.
Already from the distance we could see the trains. We came to the base
station at that day just for looking, but we found out that at this autumn
afternoon an extra train pair was appended to the schedule. It was still
possible to get tickets.
The "Summit" now approached the base station.
The engine's coal supplies were filled up.
In the meantime we admired the constructions that railroad engineers had
made 120 years ago.
We bought the tickets and in the queue we happened to be among the first
people in the second train Therefore we had a good view on the train before
us when it started moving upwards.
At "Jacobs Ladder" with a grade of 37 % the train before us crossed
the treeline.
In two places our upward train had to be passed by downcoming trains.
Clouds obscured the summit when our train came to Jacobs Ladder.
At the viewpoint on top of New England, where you should overlook six New
England states, the fog was so dense that we were glad when we were back
at the train.
Going down again, we had the same breathtaking view like generations of
tourists before us. The brakeman surely had a hard work and brought us
safely down.