Just another Fall Foliage Season at the Cog Railway

By Randall Armor| December 9, 2024

Each year, from late September thru mid-October, Mount Washington presents her best, most colorful face to the world. The onset of Autumn is always spectacularly beautiful up here, bringing with it an equally spectacular part-time migration of admirateurs du feuillage (as our friends across the northern border might politely say).

The first six weeks of Fall ’24 saw an unusually dense influx of leaf-seeking out-of-towners converging on our rocky little chunk of paradise. Now, don’t get us wrong– tourism is the lifeblood of our business and our communities. Welcoming all who show up every year to respectfully enjoy the beauty and adventure for which our region is so widely renowned is our raison d’être– it’s our job, and we take it very seriously. But this year’s volume strained not only our uphill capacity but our credulity. Reports of chaotic, overcrowded roads and sullied trails were almost beyond belief, none more so than the morning-after accounts of the volunteers who ventured out into the wild to clean up after those who had left a lot more than footprints. If you’re now thinking that maybe we used that word “dense” a few sentences back for a reason, well, you might just be smarter than the average bear.

Meanwhile, back here at the world’s first mountain-climbing Cog Railway, 2024 marked our 155th operating season since we first climbed to the summit with passengers on July 3, 1869. This year’s big anniversary celebration on September 14 may be behind us now, but it’s already taken its rightful place in company lore. As fireworks lit the faces of over 500 happy guests and staff, President Wayne Presby noted that it was the “best event” he’d ever attended (and coming from Wayne, that’s saying something!) Earlier in the day, Waumbek Station hosted rotating steam trainloads of enthusiasts, and historian Tim Lewis delighted his audiences with tales of the Railway’s early days. Chef Joe’s of Franconia outdid themselves with a tasty catered buffet dinner in our meticulously cleaned and child/adult-proofed maintenance building (a tip-o’the-lid goes out to Shop Foreman John Suitor and his crew for that Herculean effort). And after his comprehensive recounting of the long list of improvements and innovations made under his watch since 1983, Wayne and wife Sue were presented with their alma mater’s Lifetime Achievement Award by Megan Carpenter, dean of the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

Speaking of UNH, September also found us bidding farewell to our first-ever summer interns, Tatum and Will, from the University’s Mechanical Engineering program. T&W worked under the tutelage of our resident Mechanical Engineer Caleb Gross and General Counsel Earl Duval, crawling under the hood and deep in the guts of our diesel and steam locomotives. Most importantly, they helped coordinate the activities of their classmates and faculty back at UNH working to design and fabricate the Railway’s next Maintenance-of-Way innovation– a multi-purpose ELECTRIC track speeder! When in service, this little bugger will quickly transport personnel and equipment to where they’re needed on the mountain, whether it be for track maintenance, locomotive repair, or to aid in hiker rescue. Ready or not, the future is coming. We saw it with our own eyes in these exceptional young talents, and we’ll be sure to let you all know when it gets here!

Once the last leaf on the mountain went psychedelic and fluttered to the ground, we shifted gears, shut down for 2 weeks and proceeded to rip up about a third of a mile of rickety old lightweight rail and rotting wooden ties between the boarding platforms and the maintenance shop. Taking the main line and shuttle tracks out meant we were effectively cutting ourselves off from the majority of our rolling stock tucked away in the shop, so to say we were highly motivated to finish this project quickly would be an understatement. All-hands pitched in, and supported with heavy equipment and personnel from Presby Construction, we wrapped Phase 1 of the work on schedule and sent the first trainload of passengers for the 2024-25 winter season to Waumbek Station on Saturday, November 9.

Once completed in the spring, we’ll have two state-of-the-art service tracks featuring properly graded and ballasted heavyweight rail fixed to steel ties with Pandrol rail clips, newly-designed bolted rack spools, improved site drainage thanks to a new box culvert, and a lengthened below-grade inspection pit extending under both tracks to streamline the daily servicing of our steam locomotives. Most importantly, of course, our engineers will soon be able to step on the gas and safely bring our trains up to the boarding gates and back down to the shop at a hair-raising, ludicrous top speed of 5mph!

Finally, we held a press event and ribbon cutting ceremony at Marshfield on November 21, officially introducing several new remote weather stations installed along our right-of-way above and below tree line. The expansion of the Mount Washington Observatory’s Mesonet network of automated stations to the western side of the mountain will give scientists and meteorologists at the Observatory and around the world a much more complete picture of “the World’s Worst Weather.” In attendance were staff and management of the Observatory, including Drew Bush, Executive Director, and Rob Kirsch, past President and Trustee. Also attending were representatives of state and local government and regional stakeholders, including Taylor Caswell, commissioner at the NH Department of Business and Economic Affairs and Chris Thayer, Senior Director at the Appalachian Mountain Club. After the ceremony, guests rode a charter train up to Waumbek Station, passing another of the new devices located trackside on Cold Spring Hill.

The presentations by Charlie Buterbaugh, Jay Broccolo and Keith Garrett, in particular, reminded us of how fortunate we are to have so many knowledgeable, passionate, and unifying partners on Mount Washington. Everyone who works on or visits the mountain owes the Observatory staff a debt of gratitude for everything they do.

Other than that, not much has been going on over here. How are things in your neck of the woods?