Image: Jefferson plane looking up

Description: Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Switchback Railroad*, looking up the Jefferson plane (Jefferson Summit of Pisgah Mountain, Carbon County, Pennsylvania from the approximate position of the capture latch. Depicted to the right is the cable-attached pusher cart known as a 'Barney'. The Barney's all had telescoping axles and a set of double flanged wheels which caught a guide shoe leading to a narrower interior track, one flange collapsing the Barney's axles inside that of the main car track—which passed over and outside the barney hatches. So configured, it could travel into one of the two openings shown and travel around the large diameter winch pulley to re-emerge out the other side. This is an in-between (non-terminus) 'relative lift bottom', where the track leading in behind the camera is at the bottom of a seven mile descending incline from Mount Pisgah, terminated by the slight rise at the position of the camera and winch. Beyond the bump of the winch hump, this view shows a staging area before a latch (brake) designed to hold any train slowing as it tops the winch house for the positioning of the Barney to emerge behind it and couple. The Barney coupled train is then released and advances on the cable into the slight drop below to climb the long ascent up the Jefferson Plane to surmount a final summit, detach from the Barney in a similar hump, then drop as if a gravity railroad to the Summit Hill station or switching network. The system could be run in funicular mode, but this was seldom used. * "The switchback" part of the railroad name refers to parts not depicted, an auxiliary spur with its own cable incline and gravity railroad descent through a clever succession of automatic, self-acting switchbacks used solely for coal transport, the founding purpose for the railroad that ended its long life as an amusement ride. These switchbacks were abandoned after the 1872 opening of the Hauto Tunnel but the name stuck as part of the legal documents when the railroad was sold to new owners for its life as a tourist railroad.
Title: Jefferson plane looking up
Credit: http://www.gingerb.com/CNJ%20Mauch%20Jefferson%20Plane%20-%20looking%20up.jpg
Author: Public domain.
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