Mahanoy Plane — Coal Country's Uphill Railroad

The ridge line above you was once crossed by one of the engineering marvels of Pennsylvania's coal era. The Mahanoy Plane was an inclined-plane railroad, a stretch of track so steep that ordinary locomotives could not climb it. Instead, loaded coal cars were hauled up the slope by cable, lifting anthracite from the Mahanoy Valley up over Broad Mountain and down to Frackville, where the Reading Railroad could carry it to market.

The plane opened in eighteen sixty-one. After a fire in eighteen sixty-eight it was rebuilt with larger engines to handle the soaring demand for Pennsylvania hard coal. At its peak, roughly eight hundred to nine hundred railroad cars crossed that ridge each day. When the anthracite industry began its long contraction, the Mahanoy Plane closed in nineteen thirty-two. Partial ruins survive nearby, quiet stone and steel remnants of a system that once powered American industry.