Our grand new Welcome arch is the first thing you’ll see as you drive onto our property. Designed and fabricated entirely on-site by the Railway’s Engineering, Creative, and Maintenance Shop teams, the arch was installed by our friends at Cote Crane & Rigging in time for our 155th anniversary celebration in September, 2024.

Just beyond the arch is an unusual looking piece of railroad equipment that offers a glimpse into the cog’s efforts to keep the tracks clear of snow and ice in the early 2000’s. Our Snow Jet is a repurposed Pratt and Whitney JT-8 jet engine, trunion-mounted to a steel flatcar, with an operator’s cab worthy of the 737 jetliner it once propelled.

Purchased as surplus from the Canadian National Railroad and modified for cog and rack operation, this beast was a sight to see and a fright to deploy. With its deafening roar and voracious appetite for diesel fuel (approximately 400 gallons per summit trip

Old Peppersass: The little engine that could

Marsh knew that in order to make his railway feasible, he needed to solve many complex problems. Chief among them were his chosen route’s rugged terrain and its steep grade, averaging 25% and nearing 38% in some spots.

He solved the terrain problem by specifying that the three mile route would be built on an elevated trestle system, and that was probably one of the easier decisions he had to make. To this day, the Cog is the only railway in the world whose mainline tracks are built entirely above ground level.

It’s also the second steepest railway in the world, and maintaining traction on such steep grades would be unthinkable on a traditional railroad. It would take an entirely new concept to make it work.

The cog gear and rack were not Marsh’s invention, but the application of that technology to a mountain climbing railway certainly was. The idea is very much like the sprocket and chain on a bicycle. The teeth of the cog gears under the locomotive engage the rack, a spooled center track fixed to the cross ties between the running rails, and as the cog turns, the locomotive pulls itself forward. See the animation below.

Shortly after receiving his charter from the State legislature, Marsh was distracted by a lawsuit over property he owned back in Chicago. The dispute was successfully defended in 1860 by his able attorney, and happened to be Abraham Lincoln’s last court appearance prior to his election as the nation’s sixteenth president.

Construction progress was delayed by the American Civil War, so it wasn’t until 1866 that Marsh took delivery of the railway’s first locomotive. Built in Boston at a cost of $2000 and originally named “Hero”, the odd looking machine quickly earned the nickname “Old Peppersass” because of its trunnion mounted, self-leveling vertical boiler’s similarity to a pepper sauce bottle. Marsh devised an ingenious system of using air pressure in its steam cylinders to safely control the engine’s descent.

The first 600 feet of track was completed quickly, including a trestle bridge spanning the Ammonoosuc River. A demonstration for government officials and investors was presented in late August (seen above). Peppersass performed admirably, and for Marsh and his dream, the sky was now literally the limit.