It was designed during the mid-Canal era as part of an overall strategic schema to lift heavy freight eastwards out of the Susquehanna Valley in suburban Southeastern Wilkes-Barre into the eastside descents which ended in the big coastal cities of the Eastern United States accessible via the Delaware Valley.
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Initially built between 1837-38 by LC&N's subsidiary Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (LH&S) to join two railroad sections purpose-built to join the freight capacity of two canals and other transportation infrastructure between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh—it was designed specifically to connect the seaports of the Delaware River with the new interior settlements of the near-midwest along the tributary rivers of the vast Mississippi River drainage basin.
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In the 1830s the region entered a boom period and began shipping coal by the Pennsylvania Canal, and by the 1840s even down the Lehigh Canal to Allentown, Philadelphia, Trenton, Wilmington, New York City, and other east coast cities and ports via the connecting engineering works of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company such as the upper Lehigh Canal, the Ashley Planes and the early Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, along with other railroads that flocked to or were born in the area.
This is the important northern entrance into the river cut gully or gap between highlands, and was an important barge loading transshipment point on the newly extended upper Lehigh Canal fed initially by a shortline railroad from the Mountain Top yard dating from the 1837 enabling legislation set up to join the Lehigh and Susquehanna Valleys via Mountain Top and the Ashley Planes incline railway.
Mountain Top's yard was the upper terminal end of the historic Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad's Ashley Planes funicular railways (1st begun 1837) which lifted freight over the steep climb from the Ashley neighborhood in Hazleton and site of a large Transfer yard bypassed by the former trackage of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and leased to the Central Railroad of New Jersey.
Consequently, even though regional railroads are much diminished in scope and influence, Mountain Top yard, once used as a marshaling yard at the top of the Ashley Planes funicular (cable driven) railway, is still an important regional element of the transportation infrastructure connecting Allentown and Philadelphia with points north and west via trackage to several yards in New York State.