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|} The Mount Washington Cog Railway is the world's first mountain-climbing cog railway (rack-and-pinion railway). The railway is still in operation, climbing Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA. It uses a Marsh rack system and one or two steam locomotives and five biodiesel powered locomotives to carry tourists to the top of the mountain. Its track is built to gauge, which is technically a narrow gauge, as it is a -inch less than . It is the second steepest rack railway in the world after the Pilatus railway, with an average grade of over 25% and a maximum grade of 37.41%. The railway is approximately long and ascends Mt. Washington's western slope beginning at an elevation of approximately above sea level and ending just short of the mountain's summit peak of . The train ascends the mountain at and descends at . It takes approximately 65 minutes to ascend and 40 minutes to descend although the diesel can go up in as little as 37 minutes. Most of the Mount Washington Cog Railway is in Thompson and Meserve's Purchase, with the part of the railway nearest to Mt. Washington's summit being in Sargent's Purchase. ==History== The railway was built by Sylvester Marsh,〔Charles Carleton Coffin, "Sylvester Marsh 'The Projector of the Mount Washington Railroad'". ''The Bay State Monthly. A Massachusetts Magazine''. Vol. III, May 1885. No. II.〕 who had grown up in Campton. Marsh came up with the idea while climbing the mountain in 1852.〔 His plan was treated as insane. Local tradition says the state legislature voted permission based on a consensus that harm resulting from operating it was no issue — since the design was attempting the impossible — but benefits were guaranteed: The $5,000 of his own money he put up, and whatever else he could raise, would be spent largely locally, including building the Fabyan House hotel at nearby Fabyan Station to accommodate the expected tourists. The railway is sometimes called "Railway to the Moon" because one state legislator remarked during the proceedings that Marsh should not only be given a charter up Mount Washington but also to the moon. Marsh obtained a charter for the road on June 25, 1858, but the American Civil War prevented any action until May 1866. After developing a prototype locomotive and a short demonstration section of track, he found investors and started construction. Despite the railroad's incomplete state, the first paying customers started riding on August 14, 1868; the construction reached the summit in July 1869.〔 The early locomotives all had vertical boilers, like many stationary steam engines of the time; the boilers were mounted on trunnions allowing them to be held vertically no matter what the gradient of the track. Later designs introduced horizontal boilers, slanted so they remain close to horizontal on the steeply graded track. Sylvester Marsh died in 1884 and control of the Cog passed to the Concord & Montreal Railroad, which ran it until 1889 when the Boston & Maine Railroad took over.〔(Mount Washington Railway Company - Historical Timeline )〕〔See also ''The Story of Mount Washington'', by F. Allen Burt, and ''Mt. Washington Cog Railway', published by the Mt. Washington Cog Railway in 1964 and again in 1975.〕 Control by the Teagues began in 1931 when Col. Henry N. Teague bought the Cog. In 1951 following Col. Teague's death, Arthur S. Teague, the colonel's protégé but no relation, became general manager. Arthur S. Teague gained ownership in 1961. After he died in 1967, the ownership passed to his wife, Ellen Crawford Teague, who ran the Cog as the world's first woman president of a railway. In 1983 Mrs. Teague sold the railway to a group of New Hampshire businessmen. Since 1986 the cog railway has been controlled and owned by Wayne Presby and Joel Bedor of Littleton, New Hampshire. The Bedor and Presby families also owned the Mount Washington Hotel and Resort in Bretton Woods for the period 1991-2006. In 1995 the railway appointed Charles Kenison the General Manager. With the assistance of Al LaPrade, a mechanical engineer, whose career began at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, these individuals were responsible for a complete revitalization of the railroad.〔〔〔Teague, Ellen Crawford, ''I Conquered My Mountain: The Autobiography of Ellen Crawford Teague'', Caanan, New Hampshire: Phoenix Publishing, 1982〕 The Cog has been in continuous operation since 1869 with service interruptions only during the World Wars. In the summer of 2008, the Cog introduced its first diesel locomotive. The Great Recession and the 2000s energy crisis led to fewer passengers, and the Cog sought to cut costs with the diesel, which could make three round trips for the cost of one steam train round trip. In 2014 the railroad carried the most passengers in its history, marking the third record year in a row. Image:Train Leaving the Depot, Mt. Washington Railroad.jpg|Leaving the depot c. 1880s Image:Lizzie Bourne Monument & R. R. Train.jpg|Partway up the mountain Image:Summit House, Mt. Washington.jpg|Arrival on the summit Image:Sliding, Mt. Washington Railway.jpg|"Devil's shingles" down 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mount Washington Cog Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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