Cleaning up the Cog

2008-07-19 18:44:46.000 – Brian Clark,  Observer

Lots of Junk

There has been, and will continue to be a lot of construction work going on up here on the summit this summer. Most of it has to do with finishing the power line project, which was started last summer and put the summit on grid power for the first time ever.

The part of this project that people are noticing, and questioning, the most these days actually involves the Cog Railroad. For many, many years, old railway timbers and other junk had been discarded to the side of the tracks. The Cog is allowed to do this because they own a certain width of land on either side of the actual tracks. Happily, the Cog hired the same company that the State Park hired to install the electric line to remove all this debris and dispose of it.

The big reason that people have been noticing this work is because a very large pile of this trackside debris has appeared along the Home Stretch of the Auto Road, on the helicopter pad. This debris can also be seen from the North View webcam, part of our webcam network.

All this stuff is being hauled out after the road closes at night by large trucks. These trucks are also being used to haul sand up to the summit, which will be used by the State Park for another project this summer. After emptying their load of sand, the truck takes on a load of Cog debris and heads down the road.

I was walking down along the Cog tracks the other day(when I took the picture linked above) and I must say, it is looking very nice. Kudos to the Cog for paying to have all the debris cleaned up!

Brian Clark,  Observer