IMPORTANT: The summit of Mount Washington (including its visitor facilities) is owned and operated by the State of New Hampshire as part of the Mount Washington State Park. While we do our best to coordinate the Railway’s schedule with that of the State Park, available staffing, weather, and other variables may affect operating hours at the Visitor Center and the Tip Top House. For up-to-date summit facility schedule, click here to visit the State Park’s website.
In less than an hour, you’ll climb through three climate zones to arrive at the top of New England!
As your train approaches the summit, you’ll see a white marker perched on a pile of boulders on the right. Young Lizzie Bourne is memorialized here as the first woman in recorded history to have perished on the summit after being forced to hunker down at this location during a devastating storm. Because of thick fog and driving rain and snow, her hiking party had no way of knowing that they were so close to shelter at the summit.
After a routine safety stop at the summit switch followed by the “all clear” signal from your Brakeman, your train slowly comes up over the final slope and then levels out at the platform. The Brakeman hops off the coach to guide the engineer to the proper spot, the Engineer applies the parking brakes, and just like that, you’ve arrived at Mount Washington State Park– the highest point in the northeastern United States.
Conditions at the top can be quite a bit different than those at the base station, so hopefully you took our advice and brought a jacket! As you leave the coach, you’ll notice that it’s at least a little cooler and windier than it was at the Base Station. After all, the subarctic tundra up here is similar to that of far northern Canada, and hurricane-force wind gusts occur on the summit an average of 110 days per year.
Trains lay over at the summit for approximately one hour, plenty of time to explore the State Park’s Sherman Adams Visitor Center and its rooftop observation deck, Extreme Mount Washington (an interactive weather exhibit), a cafeteria, and two gift shops. Send a card to friends and family with a unique Mount Washington post mark from the summit Post Office!
Perhaps the most fascinating part of the State Park’s summit campus is the historic Tip Top House, immediately adjacent to the Visitor Center. The bunker-like structure is the original summit hotel dating back to 1853. It’s the same building that sheltered Sylvester Marsh and his pastor during a life threatening storm in 1857, and it’s where the seeds of the Cog Railway were planted in his mind. Now a museum, it is believed by many to be the oldest existing mountain top hostelry in the world.
And don’t forget to get your picture taken at the famous Mount Washington Summit sign, right next to the Tip Top House. And speaking of tips, here’s one: lines at the summit sign are usually shorter when the train first arrives.
If you feel like getting a little exercise, feel free to take a walk around the immediate vicinity of the visitor center, but please don’t venture too far away– you are only guaranteed a return seat on the train you are ticketed for, and most of our trains are sold out in advance. At best, If you miss your train, you will have to wait until seats on a later train become available. At worst, you could be in for a very long, very difficult hike back down to your car!