Looking down on The Cog. Shot from roughly 5300 ft MSL, near Long Trestle, here is a view looking down at the lower half of the Mt. Washington Cog Railway, or about a mile and a half of the roughly 3 mile line. At the very top of the photo, you can see the Base Road, which takes visitors from Rte. 302, into the station complex. The alignment of this road fairly closely approximates the original ROW of the Boston & Maine spur that connected the main line to the Cog Railway Base Station. In the first few decades of operation, most of the Cog's patrons arrived via the B&M. Moving further down and slightly to the right, you can see the Shop Complex, where the line's specialized equipment is built and maintained.
Below and slightly to the left are the parking lots, and the large, grey building known as Marshfield Station. It is from here that all Cog Railway trains depart. Across the tracks from the station, is a large coal dump, which was a very busy place during the steam era. At the platform adjacent to the station, a tiny train with an orange coach is visible, sitting next to the water tower.
Moving further down the image, the single track ascends Cold Spring Hill, splitting into two parallel tracks, just beneath Waumbek Water Tank. A train with a bright yellow coach is just departing Waumbek for the summit on the left-most track, as another train descends on the right side. The two parallel tracks permit these ascending and descending trains to pass each other without stopping. The hydraulic switch complex where the parallel tracks end is visible in a clearing in the lower left portion of the photo. Finally, in the lower left corner of the image, you can see the end of the tree-line. Above this line, Mt. Washington is nothing but a pile of sharp, heavily weathered rocks, and the only vegitation consists of a few scrub pines, and some patches of grass-covered moss.
