Heritage route
Mountaineer
North Conway → Crawford Notch · United States
Mountaineer in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 38 km
- Fastest time
- 2 h
- Average speed
- 19 km/h
- Top speed
- 40 km/h
- Operator
- Conway Scenic Railroad
- Train
- EMD GP38 diesels, dome & open cars
- Countries
- United States
- In service since
- 1875
- Runs
- daily Jul–mid-Oct, select days otherwise
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Follows the 1875 Maine Central grade up Crawford Notch, creeping across the curved Frankenstein Trestle high above the Saco.
The Mountaineer retraces the Maine Central’s 1875 Mountain Division out of North Conway, a line its engineers were told could not be built. Above Bartlett the grade claws onto ledges high over the Saco valley, easing across the curved Frankenstein Trestle and the Willey Brook bridge before topping out at the little Crawford Depot in the jaws of the Notch. Dome seats sell out first for the fall foliage runs.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 19860125 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 5 m from it
Along the way
- Saco River intervale
- Bartlett village
- Frankenstein Trestle
- Willey Brook Bridge
- Gateway of Crawford Notch
- Mount Washington views
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