THE FOOTNOTES

One of the high-points (literally, I guess) of our vacation was our ride up Mount Washington on the cog railway. The cog has been running since 1869, and at that time, it was considered an "engineering marvel, a new technology of cog toothed gears". It hasn't changed at all since then, the engine is still coal fired, although they have since added a diesel powered train as well. The engineer's assistant shovels coal into the engine about 4 times a minute for the whole trip up which is about one hour (elevation 6288 feet).

We were lucky in that we were put on the "speed train", the diesel, which goes about 8 miles an hour instead of 6 for the coal powered trains. Also, the coal powered trains need to stop half way up to fill their water tanks (also steam powered, I guess). We were on the first train up that morning which meant we did not have to pull over and share the track while another train was on the way down.

The pictures don't really show just how breath-taking this adventure really was. Yes, it probably was a little scary for some especially on Jacob's Ladder where the grade was about 37% I think.

We were allowed about 30 minutes up on top of the mountain, I should mention that all the buildings up there are chained down because some of the highest recorded winds have been on Mount Washington. By the way, there is a listing in the visitor center on top that shows all those who have lost their lives on Mount Washington. Pat Kelly was listed (at about # 80 I think, currently the lists stands around 120). The plaque says he died hiking in Tuckerman's Ravine.

Anyway, the kids were amazed at how interesting the adventure was and wanted to know why we didn't go up there years ago.