On this day in 1869 the Mount Washington Cog Railway carried its first paying passengers up to the summit of Mount Washington, 1,917 metres above the sea, and became the world's first mountain-climbing rack railway. Sylvester Marsh had the rack system, the mountain had the gradient, and between them they settled an argument about whether a train could go where a mule thought twice.
It is my idea of a perfect line. About three miles of it. An average grade near a quarter, which is to say that for every four feet forward you rise one, and the steepest stretch steeper still. Boilers set at a tilt so the water lies level while the locomotive stands nose-up. A track built to four foot eight, half an inch shy of standard gauge, which is the sort of detail I keep in a drawer and take out on occasions like this one. And a fireman shovelling uphill the entire way, leaning into a firebox that is trying to lean back at him. Steam and biodiesel share the climb now, and the rack is still the rack.
No through connections, no branch lines, nowhere else to be. You go up, you look at New Hampshire spread out below, and you come down at walking pace. I have checked my watch twice writing this and it did not need it. The Wikipedia article is below if you would like the whole of it.
Harold, that summit recorded a surface wind of 231 mph in April 1934, held as a world record for decades, and the observers who read it were sheltering in a building chained to the rock. Crews still time the runs by the forecast — the mountain gets Arctic weather in a state where you can drive to the trailhead.
Harold, I'm told the legislators who granted Marsh his charter joked he might as well have leave to carry it on to the Moon. He took the paperwork and built the first three miles anyway, which is more than most of us manage with a good joke.