With the completion of the branchline, the Cog Railway began to fulfill the 1866 financial vision of the railroad men who had invested in the project. The first year of the branchline, the Cog paid a nine percent dividend. Up to this time, either due to reinvesting or due to lack of income, the railway had not paid dividends to its shareholders. With the completion of this line, the Cog Railway started to pay dividends. The trip to the base became significantly easier on July 4, 1876, with the inaugural run on the BC&M branchline from the Fabyan House to the Cog. The roundtrip stagecoach ride from the Crawford House or White Mountain House to the base was another three dollars. That first season the roundtrip rail fare from the depot to the summit was three dollars. In the early years, passengers arrived at the base depot by stagecoach from the local hotels, the Crawford House and the White Mountain House. The first official passenger trip to the summit took place on July 3, 1869. The remaining track to the summit was completed in early summer 1869. These excursions ran for the last three weeks of that summer, carrying about 600-700 passengers, some paying two dollars, others traveling free. With the five-year charter extension granted in 1863 about to expire, to meet the conditions of that charter, the proprietors called the railway essentially complete on August 14, 1868, and began to run passenger excursions part way up the mountain, to the top of Jacob’s Ladder. When the turnpike was completed, the experienced Sanborn was made supervisor of the railway construction. With Lyon’s BC&M shouldering a large stake in the endeavor, Lyon assigned John Jarvis Sanborn, the railroad’s superintendent and former bridge builder, to supervise the construction of the Turnpike. This road, later to be a profitable toll road, extended from the former Tenth New Hampshire Turnpike (now Route 302), the nearest public road, to the Cog Railway base station. To move supplies and men to the construction site, six miles in the woods from the nearest road, and later to be able to bring in passengers, Marsh applied for and received a state charter in 1867 for the construction of The Mt. Washington. “Not even the croakers and doubters hesitated a moment to get on either the car or engine and make the trip.” After this demonstration, with financing and future railroad access for tourists assured, Marsh began construction of his railroad. In August 1866, Marsh successfully demonstrated his unique railway on a quarter mile track at the western base of Mt. With time, and an agreement that Marsh would demonstrate the practicality and safety of his railway at his own expense, Lyon and other railroad men agreed to consider Marsh’s idea. Lyon initially was uninterested and considered Marsh “a crazy man.” Lyon, president of the Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad (BC&M). To Marsh, there was no more important man among them than John E. To gain financial support, and support for extending their railroads to his, Marsh needed to interest the railroad men of northern New England. (The 1852 date, sometimes attributed to Marsh’s climb, was an error introduced by out-of-state newspapers publishing his obituary.)Īlthough with sufficient means to build the Cog Railway by himself, Marsh knew the success of his endeavor required the support of local railroads to bring the passengers needed for the railway he proposed. The site of his railway was twenty-six miles from the nearest railroad station, in Littleton. Thus, Marsh conceived the idea for the Cog Railway. It could also create a project he could share with his oldest son, engineering-minded (and later, engineering-trained), John Franklin. Marsh believed “some easier and safer method of ascension” of the mountain could benefit tourists. On an 1857 trip to his Campton NH, birthplace with his Pastor, Augustus Thompson, to visit an ailing brother, the two climbed Mount Washington in a storm that almost claimed their lives. Born and raised in New Hampshire, Marsh made his fortune in Chicago, in meatpacking and grain drying before moving to Boston for what he thought would be his retirement years. A living museum, the Mount Washington Railway Company-or, more familiarly, the Cog Railway, or simply “the Cog”-was chartered by the New Hampshire State Legislature in 1858 at the request of Sylvester Marsh (1803-1884). The charter allowed him 5 years to build his railroad.
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