Ashley Planes: The Coal Lifts of the Wyoming Valley

Before a single locomotive could haul coal out of the Wyoming Valley, engineers had to solve a problem: the mountains in the way. The Ashley Planes were their answer. Built between eighteen thirty-seven and eighteen thirty-eight by the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, the system used three separate inclined-plane sections to haul loaded coal cars up more than one thousand feet of mountainside from Ashley to the plateau above.

The mechanism worked like a giant cable lift. A continuous rope, powered by stationary steam engines, grabbed onto cars and pulled them straight up the slope, one section at a time. For over a century, millions of tons of northeastern Pennsylvania anthracite moved over these planes bound for Philadelphia and the eastern seaboard. Operations finally ended in the nineteen forties, replaced by conventional rail grades. The ruins of the engine houses and embankments are on the National Register of Historic Places, a monument to the ingenuity that unlocked the coal fields.