Mount Washington Cog Railway No. 1, “Old Peppersass”

Built in 1866 in Boston by Campbell, Whittier and Company to the design of railway founder Sylvester Marsh, this locomotive was originally christened “Hero.” Its unusual vertical boiler, mounted on trunnions so it would self-level and stay upright regardless of the steep grade beneath it, quickly earned the engine the nickname “Old Peppersass” for its resemblance to a bottle of pepper sauce. It is a small 0-2-2T rack locomotive, just 16,000 lb, with 15-inch drivers and 8-by-12-inch cylinders, using the toothed Marsh rack-and-pinion system to climb grades far steeper than any adhesion railroad could manage.

On July 3, 1869, Peppersass pulled the first cog-driven train to the 6,288-foot summit of Mount Washington, proving Marsh’s rack railway concept and making the Mount Washington Cog Railway the world’s first mountain-climbing rack railway and the first cog railway of any kind. The locomotive worked construction and early excursion trains on the mountain until its retirement from regular service in 1878, after which it went on local display before touring as a historical exhibit, including a stint at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and later storage with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

The B&O returned Peppersass to New Hampshire for the Boston & Maine Railroad’s 1929 commemorative run marking the cog railway’s 60th anniversary. On July 20, 1929, descending from Jacob’s Ladder, a tooth broke on the pinion gear and the locomotive’s friction brake could not control its descent; it derailed and one passenger, photographer Daniel P. Rossiter, was killed. The wreckage was later reassembled for static display. Today, fully restored cosmetically, Old Peppersass sits on permanent static display at the railway’s Marshfield Base Station, where it is preserved as the machine that launched mountain rack railroading worldwide.