Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad

In just a few months in 1827, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company in one massive well organized effort, completely built the 9.2 miles of America's first significant railroad using the road bed of the wagon road built in 1818–19. A gravity railroad, the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad, used wooden sleepers on a gravel substrate to bring coal from mines to the river more efficiently. The work went quickly since the right-of-way surveyed by White ran along the virtually uniform gradient created by grading the original mule trail, work overseen by Hazard in 1818.

The wagon road to become gravity railroad ran from what later became Summit Hill along the south side of Pisgah Ridge to Mount Pisgah to the canal's loading chute over 200 feet above the canal banks. Summit Hill, lying nearly a thousand feet higher than Mauch Chunk, was the starting point for the cars of coal. Descenting by gravity by means of inclined planes and chutes to their destination of boats in the river, the whole of this plan was evolved by Josiah White, under whose direction the project was complete in four months.

The rails were of rolled bar-iron, three-eighths of an inch in thickness and an inch and a half in width, laid upon wooden ties, which were kept in place by means of stone ballast. The loaded cars or wagons, each having a capacity of approximately one and a half tons, were connected in trains from six to fourteen, attended by men who regulated their speed.

Turn-outs were provided at intervals and the empty cars were drawn back to the mines by mules. They descended with the trains in specially constructed cars, affording a novel and rather ludicrous spectacle. Thirty minutes was the average time consumed in making the descent, while three hours was the average return time.