July 3, 2024 marks the 155th anniversary of the first passenger train to arrive at the summit of Mount Washington. The creation of the World’s First Mountain-Climbing Cog Railway was a seemingly impossible feat celebrated far and wide, one that continues to fascinate visitors from all over the world more than a century and a half later.

To mark the occasion, throughout 2024 we’ll be focusing our attention on the visionaries, the stewards, and the innovators who imagined, built and continue to maintain and grow this remarkable example of American ingenuity.

Thanks in large part to the exhaustive research of historian Tim Lewis and his reliance on contemporary, primary-source material, we now have an intimate and authoritative record of the genesis of the railway through periods of growth, challenge, and rebirth, and the persons and personalities responsible for all of it. Each month, we’ll be excerpting portions of Tim’s work and publishing it below.

And mark you calendars– our year-long celebration will culminate on September 14, 2024 with a very special commemorative event open to the public, with steam train rides, shop tours, food and drink, guest speakers, and fireworks!  Tickets for the day-long event are on sale now. All of this will expand the story of a modern operation rooted deeply in the past, but always with a keen eye focused on the future. 

The Mount Washington Cog Railway– since 1869, truly THE ROUTE OF INNOVATION.

Timothy R. Lewis is a historian, former radio and television journalist, producer, and news anchor, and retired professor of Broadcast and Digital Journalism at Northern Vermont University– Lyndon (now Vermont State University). His lifelong interest in the Cog Railway is neither casual nor academic– it’s personal. Tim literally grew up at Marshfield Base Station, where his father, Norm “Jitney” Lewis, was a steam locomotive engineer from 1950 until 1967. During that time, “Jitney Junior committed his first act of journalism” as the young writer and editor for a weekly employee newsletter, the Cog Clatter.

Begun in 2015, Tim’s academic research project, The Mount Washington Cog Railway– The Jitney Years is THE authoritative record of the World’s First Mountain-Climbing Cog Railway. In Tim’s words, his “sprawling “crowd-sourced” memoir contains comedy and tragedy, love and loss, is generously illustrated and can easily be sampled.” As part of our 155th anniversary celebration, Tim has generously made his project accessible to all. While we’re only able to focus on tiny portions of his exhaustive research here, we do encourage interested readers to dive in and lose themselves, as we have, in the stories of man and machine committed to the seemingly impossible in one of the harshest environments on the planet.