Cog railway

A cog railway or rack and pinion railway is a mountain railway with a special centre rack rail[?] mounted in the middle of the sleepers[?] between the regular rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cog wheels that mesh into this rack rail (picture (http://www.pilatus.ch/images/zahnradbahn-stangen.jpg)). This then allows the locomotives to haul the train up steeply inclined slopes.

Examples:

• Mount Washington in New Hampshire, built in 1869, the only railway in the world built entirely on a trestle (3.1 miles or 5.2 km long).
• Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway, Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States
• Jungfrau Joch[?], on the border of the cantons of Bern and Valais, Switzerland
• Schneebergbahn, Lower Austria, Austria
• The Nilgiri branch of the South Indian Railway, between Mettupalayam[?] and Conoor[?] in Tamil Nadu.
• Mount Pilatus near Lucerne - the world’s steepest, max. 48%.

See also: the Fell railway[?] system that uses friction wheels on a centre traction rail.