Approaching the summit. With just a few hundred yards to go, Mount Washington's Steam Locomotive #2 "Ammonoosuc" and her cherry red coach are entering the final curve on the line and are about to make climb the short, steep stretch that leads to the summit platform. In the late afternoon, this is the last chance to catch the train in sunlight, as it will shortly enter the deep shadows created by the Sherman Adams Summit Building on which I am standing. A couple of hundred feet ahead, they will pass a small cone of piled rocks, with a white, wooden monument on it, dedicated to the memory of 23 year-old Lizzie Bourne, who died of in a terrible storm back in 1855, before there was a Cog Railway. She was the first woman to die on Mt. Washington and was literally a few hundred feet from the safety of the Tip-Top House. Shortly, Engineer Joe Eggleston will blow one, long, mournful whistle. While this is normal procedure as the crew approaches either the summit or the base, it is particularly touching here, as they approach the summit that a lot of people have died without ever reaching over the years.
And yes, that stretch of pavement in the upper portion of this photo is the Mt. Washington Auto Road, which comes up the east side of the mountain. Right here below the summit is the only place where the railway and the road actually converge. Since the railway and the auto road are on opposite sides of the mountain, their respective base terminals are actually quite far apart. I believe the drive between the two is something like 46 miles and takes about an hour and 10 minutes to complete.
