Cog Railway President Wayne Presby holds an air caster, underside facing out, that’s one of several that allows workers to use compressed air to move a locomotive on easily moved rails lying atop the cement floor of the Cog’s brand-new maintenance building. (EDITH TUCKER PHOTO)
Cog Railway President Wayne Presby stands in front of the brand-new 250-by-120-foot Cog maintenance facility that replaces a wood-beam-and-clapboard shop built in the 1890s. (EDITH TUCKER PHOTO)
Cog Railway President Wayne Presby holds an air caster, underside facing out, that’s one of several that allows workers to use compressed air to move a locomotive on easily moved rails lying atop the cement floor of the Cog’s brand-new maintenance building. (EDITH TUCKER PHOTO)
Cog Railway President Wayne Presby stands in front of the brand-new 250-by-120-foot Cog maintenance facility that replaces a wood-beam-and-clapboard shop built in the 1890s. (EDITH TUCKER PHOTO)
THOMPSON & MESERVE'S PURCHASE — The Mt. Washington Cog Railway has invested about $5 million over the past five years in capital projects, with the bulk of these dollars paying for re-railing the whole route from the Marshfield Base Station to the Sherman Adams Building on the 6,288-foot summit with stiffer, stronger 100-pound rail and for constructing a brand-new modern fabrication and maintenance facility, explained Cog president Wayne Presby of Littleton during a tour Thursday.
The rerailing project is designed to provide a smoother ride, reduce long-term track and rolling stock maintenance costs and increase customer confidence in the line, he said. The rerailing car that features an internal knuckle-boom crane, lights and hydraulic-powered tools was custom-built for the project by Cog employees and should remain in service for decades to come, allowing track maintenance to be scheduled around the clock, if need be.
“In the 38 years I have been involved with the railway, this project represents the highest cost-to-benefit of any project we have yet to undertake,” Presby noted in an application for a special competitive New Hampshire revolving loan fund established in 1994 for railroad capital rehabilitation and equipment for Class III railroads and cog railroadss. Two railroads applied for the N.H. Department of Transportation-administered loan, and the Cog was selected.
Gov. Chris Sununu and the Executive Council approved the Cog’s loan of $1,228,160 at its May 5 meeting.
Although the Cog owners had used the special loan fund in the past and repaid the borrowed dollars and interest in their entirety, Presby said he had not anticipated borrowing for this project. But the tourist attraction’s 2020 drop in revenues due to COVID-19 made this public-private financial arrangement very appealing.
The new, roughly $3 million all-metal maintenance building, located slightly down slope from the far smaller wood-beam and clapboard shops built in the 1890s, boasts 34,000 square feet of space: 26,000 square feet on the ground level and 8,000 square feet on the mezzanine.
“It is 250 feet long and 120 feet at its widest,” Presby explained. “The insulated double-sided metal wall panels have a 27.5 R factor and the ceiling a 37-plus R factor.” The building is well lighted and fully sprinklered, served by large water-storage tanks. Two 10-ton bridge cranes dominate the upper reaches of the enormous open work space. They not only will be used when new passenger cars, locomotives, and Cog racks are built, but also for more routine maintenance projects that require lifting major components out of its fleet of locomotives for either servicing or replacement.
But Presby is particularly pleased with finding a solution that allows the Cog’s rolling stock to be moved around the enormous floor space without embedding any tracks into its expansive cement floor. The Cog now uses an air caster system that’s virtually friction-free to lift and move all the heavy equipment and materials its workers fabricate and maintain.
“We can easily move the rails, and the casters can move in any direction; our floor space has been left continuous,” Presby said. “Unlike in the old shops, we can now use fork lifts.”
Presby said his daughter Abigail is now working at the family-owned Cog, organizing the vast array of tools that have been accumulated over the years. She’s listing the exact location of each, thanks to a computer software program. In the past, workers often had to spend nonproductive time locating a needed tool, and sometimes new ones were bought unnecessarily. “We have a surprising amount of duplication,” Presby lamented.
Increasingly, the Cog is adopting high-tech routines. Cog staffers servicing its rolling stock will use WiFi-embedded safety glasses, allowing them to document the work they are doing. A special zoom camera will be installed on this building’s summit-facing peak, allowing the maintenance staff to communicate directly with the on-board Cog team.
The Cog maintains a very complete inventory of all the major components of all its rolling stock. Supply-chain disruptions due to COVID-19 plus its remote location at the end of the Base Road on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest make this an essential, Presby explained.
“We’re the kind of heavy industry that has been traditional in much of the North Country, and we’re very pleased to be recognized as one of the region’s most well-known attractions,” Presby noted. Typically, the Cog employs 20 year-round workers who earn competitive salaries plus benefits, including an 80 percent employer-paid family health insurance plan, disability insurance, a bonus program and regular pay increases.
The Cog ran its trains all winter, and Presby said he and his nephew, general manager Ryan Presby, were thrilled at how many took advantage of this adventurous way to get out into the spectacular landscape from November through April, riding in trains that were only at 50 percent capacity to comply with the state’s distancing rules. The Cog trains are now running all the way to the summit. They started doing so on the May 1 weekend.
The old maintenance shops will likely be transformed into a specialized Cog museum designed to appeal to its many visitors from around the globe. Built in 1869, the Cog was the first mountain-climbing railroad in the world.
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