The Steam Pump That Pushed Water to the Summit — The Mount Washington Cog Railway

This pump pushed water from here to the summit of Mount Washington, 3,700 feet up, in a single lift.

* Installed in 1911, one of a pair, built by Dean Bros of Indianapolis

* A 16-inch steam piston squeezed a 3-inch water piston to make close to 2,000 pounds of pressure per square inch

* The water climbed through 3 miles of pipe barely an inch and a half wide, laid up the railway's trestles

* Two men and about 150 tons of coal a season kept it running, and the whole pump house shook with every stroke

* Retired more than once, it kept coming back whenever the summit ran dry, and it worked on this spot until 2020

The whole story.

You are looking at one of the hardest-working machines in Cog Railway history, and it never turned a wheel.

This is a steam-driven water pump, built by the Dean Bros. Pump Works of Indianapolis. In 1911, the railway installed two of them in a pump house here at the base of Mount Washington, and their job sounds impossible: take water at the bottom of the mountain and push it, in a single lift, all the way to the top.

Why the summit needed a pump

There is no well, no spring, and no reservoir at 6,288 feet. Every drop of water used at the summit, for the Summit House and the Tip Top House, for drinking, cooking, washing, and fire protection, had to come up from below. In the steam era, the railway itself was thirsty too, and water tanks stood along the line. Before 1911, getting water up the mountain was slow and limited. The new pumping plant changed that.

How it worked

Look at the two ends of the machine. The big cylinder is the steam cylinder, 16 inches across. The small one is the water cylinder, only 3 inches across. A large steam piston driving a very small water piston is a pressure multiplier, letting this pump squeeze water to pressures reported between about 1,600 and 2,350 pounds per square inch.

From the pump house, the water climbed about 3,700 vertical feet through roughly three miles of heavy galvanized pipe, just an inch and a half wide inside, laid along the railway's trestles. The line had 50 slip joints because a pipe that long grows and shrinks with temperature, and it had to move without breaking.

The boiler that fed the pumps was fired by hand with coal. Running the plant took two men and, by one account, about 150 tons of coal a season. Men who worked around it remembered that the whole pump house shook with every stroke of the piston.

The men who ran it

Machines this stubborn need people just as stubborn. Gideon Corriveau ran the pump house from July 1919 to September 1929, and signed his name on a roof beam at age 62: "Gid Corriveau, July 1919 to Sept 1929."

Harold Adams tended the pump for decades. When a dry summer left the summit short of water in 1964, Adams and Linc Handford brought the old pump back to life. Crews remembered couplings on the line letting go and throwing geysers into the air, and Adams sitting calmly by the pipe, smoking, while the water flew.

Charles Morrill, who ran the pumps in 1975, believed he was the last man to run them for any real stretch of time. He blew the pump house whistle on the hour, a sound the summit could hear.

Retired, again and again

A water-driven Pelton wheel on Franklin Brook took over the pumping in the 1930s, because water power didn’t need two men and a mountain of coal. On paper, the steam pumps were done. In practice, they kept coming back: fired up in the dry summer of 1964, working in the 1970s, run by Morrill in 1975, and rebuilt in the early 1980s to run on compressed air when the main water wheel plant broke down.

The pump house itself stood until June 3, 2020, when it was taken down to make room for the railway's new engine shop. The pumps and their boiler were set aside rather than scrapped, and one of them is the machine in front of you now.

Look closer

Before you walk on, find the brass plates on the pump:

One reads "Dean Bros, Indianapolis," with the size, 16 x 3 x 18, and shop number 22767.
Another, on the barrel, reads "Patented May 16, 1899." The design was already a dozen years old when the Cog bought its pumps, proven technology for an unforgiving job.

The green paint still showing through the rust is close to a century of weather, work, and mountain air.

Quick facts box

What: Steam-driven high-pressure water pump, one of a pair
Maker: Dean Bros. Pump Works, Indianapolis, Indiana
Installed at the Cog: 1911
Job: Push water from Marshfield Base Station to the summit, about 3,700 feet up, in a single lift
Steam cylinder: 16 inches. Water cylinder: 3 inches
Pipeline: About 3 miles of 1.5-inch pipe on the railway trestles, with 50 slip joints
Fuel: Hand-fired coal boiler, about 150 tons a season
Pump house demolished: 2020, to make room for the new engine shop

Portions of this story are drawn from The Jitney Years (jitneyyears.org), a crowdsourced history of the Cog Railway's steam era edited by Tim "Jitney Jr." Lewis and built from the records and recollections of generations of Cog employees and their families.

The Pump That Pushed Water Up a Mountain

THE MOUNT WASHINGTON COG RAILWAY