North Adams Museum Hosts 'Old Peppersass' This Weekend
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The North Adams Museum of History and Science is hosting a pioneering steam engine this weekend.
The "Old Peppersass" cog steam engine that once chugged up New Hampshire's Mount Washington will be on display at Western Gateway Heritage State Park on Saturday and Sunday.
It's presence is part of a three-year celebration marking the 150th anniversary of Mount Washington Cog Railway, said Pam Sullivan, organizer for the tour and events.
Sullivan reached out to the city to host the 1866 steam engine after learning about the city's railroading history, said Charles Cahoon, president of the North Adams Historical Society. The cog railroad and the Hoosac Tunnel are both considered rail engineering marvels.
The brainchild of New Hampshire native Sylvester Marsh, who'd first made his money practically inventing the Chicago meat-packing industry, the cog railroad offered an easier, if lengthy, ride up the highest mountain in the Northeast.
When Marsh had approached the New Hampshire Legislature about his idea, Sullivan said one senator described him as "That crazy man man, he wants to build a railway to the moon."
It took three years to build the cog railway up the 6,288-foot mountain; Old Peppersass, built three years earlier and used in the railway's construction, would be the first engine to make it the three miles to the summit. Gears, or cogs, on engine keep it on the track.
The little wood-fired steam engine pushed an open car with about 20 to 24 passengers, said the Cog's general manager Gareth Slattery, who hauled Old Peppersass over the Mohawk Trail to the city yard for safekeeping on Friday.
"There would be three engines, and they would go a third of the way," said Slattery. "At each stop, there would be a platform and water and wood."
Most people who took the rail up the mountain stayed overnight. Sullivan said the area became a tourist attraction around the turn of the last century and the cog railway would take passengers to the hotels that constructed on the mountain.
The railway now uses more modern diesel and biodiesel engines and runs about 70 passengers every hour on the half-hour. It's been kept operating all this time largely through the efforts of the few families that have owned it, after two rail companies ran it from the late 1880s into the 1930s. It's currently owned by the Bedor and Presby families.
Old Peppersass, named for its similarity to a pepper sauce bottle when its steam chimney is in place, was absent for a chunk of the railways history. It was packed off in 1893 to the Chicago World's Fair — and didn't come back.
Slattery said it was found decades later in a warehouse in Baltimore. "Maybe that's how it survived," he said. "It was forgotten."
But it's return to the railway for its 60th anniversary was a disaster. During the rededication in 1929, the engine plunged off a trestle at Jacob's Ladder on its way down and exploded, killing one and stranding 240 people on the mountain. Many had come from a governor's conference in Connecticut to attend the dedication and were in the five cars ahead of Old Peppersass.
"The majority of the party, clad in light summer clothes, suffered from the freezing temperature on the mountain but few showed any signs of nervousness or panic," according to a report in the Chicago Tribune.
Patched up after the accident, the engine usually stands at the base station at the Mount Washington Cog Railway. But it's making appearances around the region over the next three years (hopefully not getting lost again), including its kickoff at the steampunk festival in Waltham last month.
Old Peppersass will be on display in the promenade at Heritage State Park during the day on Saturday and Sunday; the museum is open both days from 10 to 4, with admission a goodwill offering. There will also be videos on railroading and The Cog.
Tags: Heritage State Park, historical museum, passenger rail,
