Where other radiators faced overheating and clogging issues, Mesabi Radiators ran with zero downtime for 20 years and counting on America’s iconic Pikes Peak Cog Railway.
Manitou Springs, Colorado – While Mesabi radiators are known for their ability to thrive in some of the most abominable, rugged locations around the world, there’s still much to be said about equipping, say, a passenger cog for an idyllic tourist destination with the Cadillac of radiators.
The Broadmoor Manitou & Pikes Peak Cog Railway, founded in 1889, is a historic passenger cog that routes visitors on a 3-hour round-trip journey to the summit of Pikes Peak, a national attraction made iconic for its natural views and history. Indeed, the summit’s beauty inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write “America the Beautiful.”
But behind idyllic scenery is tactical, solid engineering that allows this cog to traverse the rugged landscape and put happy smiles on the faces of tourists nearly every day of the year. If a cog were to theoretically overheat, a joyful trip could quickly come to an end. That means there’s absolutely no room for error.
The Broadmoor, the Railway’s parent company, first approached L&M Radiator in the early 2000s after experiencing some clogging and overheating issues due to repowering their system, which had been active for more than a century. At the increased horsepower, the conventional (non-Mesabi) radiator couldn’t perform.
Though this application seems mild in comparison to, say, an iron mine or a landfill, it still presented its fair share of challenges.
Challenge #1: At a summit of 14,115 feet, the Pikes Peak Cog Railway is regarded as the highest cog railway in the world. The high altitude means the air is much thinner than usual, so the radiator must be engineered to get sufficient airflow to regulate the temperature of the cog’s engine.
Challenge #2: People are heavy, and this cog holds plenty of them: 214 per train. Naturally, the increased weight adds stress to the engine, which in turn adds stress to the radiator.
Challenge #3: The Pikes Peak Cog Railway ventures on an incline that varies between 12% to 25% at different points in its route. In other words, there are times when it travels at a nearly 45-degree angle. Again, this puts added pressure on the engine, which puts added pressure on the radiator to keep it cool.
Challenge #4: Cottonwood falls from Pikes Peak’s trees each spring. Though it’s a beautiful sight, the fluff is not so friendly to non-Mesabi radiators, which the cottonwood seed plugs, leading to overheating.
“In many ways, the Pikes Peak cog has to work a lot harder than your average locomotive,” said Smith. “With the altitude, the people on board, and the percent of grade that they climb, there’s more strain on the radiator.”
So, they put L&M engineers to the task, who discovered that a standard Mesabi HTC radiator with copper tubes would cool the engines of all passenger locomotives seamlessly.
Twenty years later, in 2018, The Broadmoor reached out again. They wanted to upgrade some of their equipment, and make sure the existing Mesabis could remain in a few of the refurbished trains.
When he first got the call, L&M Sales Representative Steve Smith assumed the radiators had been overhauled at least once in the twenty years since their installation. When he arrived on site, Smith realized that he was working with the very same radiators that L&M had installed twenty years prior, which were still in excellent condition.
Working together with Smith, the team decided to keep the original framework of the Mesabi radiators but upgrade the tubes to a newer, more efficient design. To accomplish this, Smith himself brought the tubes to the Railway and spent three hours replacing the tubes, which did not require removing the radiator from the cog. After instructing the maintenance team at Pikes Peak on how it was done, they handled the rest on their own.
“The maintenance and management team at Pikes Peak were very impressed,” said Smith. “When you have radiators run for 20 years like that, without having to do anything to them, that’s pretty remarkable.”
The Mesabi Difference: Reliability That Spans Decades
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