This page originally appeared on Thomas Ehrenreich's Railroad Extra Website
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MT. WASHINGTON TRAIN FROM BASE STATION.
The Base Station is six miles from the Fabyan House, up the Ammonoosuc
Valley, and is reached after surmounting steep grades; nothing
however, in comparison to those conquered by the cog railway with
which the Fabyan trains connect. These mountain trains ascend
to the summit in a climb of three miles, with an average grade
of 1,300 feet to the mile, and a maximum grade of 1,980 feet to
the mile; or one in three. The ascent is made in 1 1-2 hours.
The locomotives are queer-looking pieces of machinery, ungainly
but of enormous power, and perform their duty by pushing the cars
from below, or by retarding their descent from the same relative
position. The complicated brakes are supplemented by a central
rail, fitted with cogs, and played into by cog-wheels on the locomotive,
by which the train slowly ratchets itself up the steep slopes.
No fatal accident has ever taken place on these trains during
the twenty-six years the railroad hag been in operation.
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