Of Strange Bedfellows and Soggy Coggers

a recent major weather event showed us what we’re made of, and it’s 90% water! (as recounted to us by Train Master Andy Vilaine)

Coggers are certainly no stranger to the “World’s Worst Weather”– we’re generally desensitized to severe conditions others might find alarming. Running any railway, especially one on Mount Washington, requires constant readiness to adapt to unique, demanding, and rapidly evolving circumstances. With the historic deluge that submerged northern New England on Monday, December 18th 2023 we had all of that and more, catching even the most seasoned and hardened of us with our Carhartt Double Knee Work Pants down. 

When I arrived for work early that Monday, it was just another stormy morning, with winds howling and rain falling at considerable rates– certainly nothing new for us. A sizable, downed tree limb hanging high on the power lines along Base Station Road suggested the likelihood of an outage, also a common occurrence. The plan was to open and operate our normal winter schedule to Waumbek, running on generator power at Marshfield Base Station if necessary. Guests would not get the 5-state, hundred-mile fair weather view, they’d get better than that–an up close, dramatic peek at the real, wild Mount Washington, safely and with warming huts and complimentary hot refreshments at Waumbek Station!

After assisting the shop and train crews rolling out the day’s consist, plow truck operator Joe and I set out to assess the conditions at all the usual high water trouble spots along Base Station Road. What we found was disturbing–the mighty Ammonoosuc River had become a swollen, raging torrent of brown water and debris flowing ferociously at levels and locations we’d never seen before! New streams had found paths of least resistance across the road itself. Our initial “roll with the punches” assessment had now shifted towards real concern– it looked like we’d be facing flooding on a dangerous level.

While our elevated track system is immune to heavy rain or snow melt, our access road is not, and would soon become impassable in multiple spots. Based on prior experience with the October flood of 2017, I was particularly concerned about one notorious low spot just below the Omni Mount Washington Resort that floods reliably even in a normal storm. I phoned vacationing General Manager Ryan Presby, who had just been in contact with NHDOT, and we made the call to shut down and send everyone home before the rapidly collapsing conditions forced the state to close the road entirely.

The goal now was to contact the day’s customers to re-book their tickets, to get the trains safely tucked away indoors, and to get staff on their way home before they became stranded. What I didn’t know at the time was that escape to dry ground was already no longer possible. One of our guys found that out the hard way when his sedan’s tires quickly lost contact with the road while attempting to cross an unusual flooded spot adjacent to Fabyan’s Station Restaurant. With his car hydro-locked, he floated helplessly in the frigid water until emergency personnel pulled him out of his car to safety.

With the Base secured, the remaining 20 employees were outbound on the Base Road, pulling up short due to deep water near the employee entrance to the Omni Mount Washington Resort. We knew that the Hotel had also been cut off from Route 302 by flooding across their main entrance, so detouring through their parking lot wasn’t an option. We’d all soon be looking for an alternative plan to get out to the main road.  

Joe, along with our mechanical engineer Caleb, backtracked to investigate two narrow, unpaved forest roads close to Marshfield Station. I followed in my personal truck. Not surprisingly, Jefferson Notch Road was closed and gated for the winter, and Mount Clinton Road was out of the question due to raging flood waters not even half a mile in.

We turned back, stopping quickly to check the river at Upper Falls, a popular swimming hole notorious for dangerous swirling currents even on low-flow days. What looked like technical class 5+ whitewater had breached the rocky pool and even swamped the pedestrian bridge! It was the highest water level any of us had ever seen there, leaving the three of us with an apocalyptic sense of awe.

Meanwhile, the hotel employee entrance was accessible, just before the flooded intersection with Route 302 (and our colleague’s car still bobbing gently in the current). But hotel security had set up a roadblock and would not let any of us pass. We’d heard that most area roads were impassable, and Crawford Notch to the southeast was underwater. Reality quickly began to set in: we’d become a bunch of castaways on our own access road, stranded at a high spot between several new bodies of water!

It was around this time that a familiar tune started looping through my head. It was the theme to Gilligan’s Island– not the one they played on TV, but a more ominous version in a dark minor key. I even lip-synched along with the refrain– “a three-hour tour… a three-hour tour” as The Cog’s own three-hour summit tour suddenly occurred to me. Coincidence? I thought not.

It fell to me to break the news to the group that we were well and truly stuck. And it fell to GM Ryan to un-stuck us. He arranged rooms at the hotel for all of us, two-by-two, which brought to mind another famous respite from another devastating flood many eons ago. And like the parting of the Red Sea (I know, mixed Biblical metaphors), the security cordon happily cleared the way for paying customers. With a dry path before us, our sad little caravan of refugees rolled onto the hotel grounds.

At the check-in desk minutes later, we all side-eyed each other nervously, anticipating an awkward sleepover at which we’d be learning things about our workmates that we’d rather not know. All because of a little water. OK, a lot of water. A convivial, hours-long group lunch at Stickney’s eased that tension a little bit, but not by much.

Meanwhile, I could not sit still. After ensuring that everyone was accounted for, I decided to take advantage of the swanky digs and blow off a little steam at the hotel gym. I stopped in at the gift shop to pick up some appropriate outfit, maybe something flattering in Spandex, but was quickly reminded of the swankiness of the digs– even a simple pair of sweatpants would have set me back a C note! Figuring Ryan would balk at picking up that tab, I bought myself a basic pair of shorts for half that.

Back at Stickneys, by 4:30 the mood had turned gloomy and the sky outside had turned dark. However fine the accommodations, nobody seemed to be looking forward to spending the night away from home. Even wide-eyed Corbin, who said he had never seen a chandelier or even a hotel lobby, seemed down in the dumps– after all, he would be rooming with Marc. The overall vibe was depressing, so I went outside to check on the storm, and was immediately heartened by what I saw– the rain had slowed to a drizzle. One of the kitchen workers taking a cigarette break told me that some of the least severe flooding on 302 to the west was clearing (although it would be another week before 302 east through Crawford Notch down toward North Conway would be reopened).

I went back inside and conveyed the news to the gang, and before I got the words out of my mouth, nearly 20 anxious Coggers had bolted and were high-tailing it up three flights of stairs to collect belongings from their rooms. Out at our vehicles, we formed up bumper-to-bumper, making sure the lead driver would be extra vigilant approaching any standing water. Then slowly, cautiously, but with a steely resolve not unlike that of Sylvester Marsh in the early days of his unimaginable mountain-climbing Cog Railway, we set off boldly into the unknown.

 …

Now, a postscript. Almost all of us eventually made it home that night. Anyone heading west toward Bethlehem, Littleton and Vermont, or north to Whitefield and Lancaster had little difficulty. Route 3 south in Twin Mountain was blocked by police vehicles, but local traffic was waved through. I didn’t even attempt to head east through Crawford Notch on 302, instead taking a wide, 3-hour detour around the flood zone: first north to Gorham, then east and south through western Maine, finally crossing back into New Hampshire near North Conway and my home in Jackson. I seem to recall blowing through a couple of yelling and screaming police blockades, but I might be misremembering that. Chris, however, our unfortunate colleague whose wrecked car was still bobbing gently in what some of us were beginning to call Lake Fabyan, only managed to make it home to Portland via cab and Uber– get this– 36 hours later. We had all made it through our second hundred year flood in six years, and other than Chris, we were all back at Marshfield the next morning, ready, willing, and able to resume the business of doing whatever it takes to operate one of the world’s great rail adventures.