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DBpedia 2015-10

Query DBpedia 2015-10 by triple pattern

Matches in DBpedia 2015-10 for { ?s ?p "The 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) narrow gauge Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, or Mauch Chunk & Summit Hill Railway, was built in 1827 by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) and ran for over a hundred years until the middle days of the Great Depression. It was the second operational United States railroad. In its last five decades of operation, it served primarily as a tourist attraction.Begun as a one way gravity railroad that connected Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) and Summit Hill, PA servicing the site of one of the earliest commercial anthracite (coal) mines in Pennsylvania with freight and passenger services, the early road required mules to return its four-ton coal cars to the top which took over four hours. Subsequently, the road would send down groups of 6-8 coal cars under control of a brakeman, and once 40-42 cars were down, send down the special "mule cars" with the draft animals, thus having just enough animals to return all cars back to the top. The road gradually became a popular sensation— a weekend travel destination for the well to do to visit and soon, with the earliest for-pay riders documented in 1829, began to carry passengers some of the time over the somewhat exciting descent. As a coal road, product demand had grown steadily and eventually the return-by-mule railway could not keep up with throughput demands even operating three shifts, so despite some difficult engineering, the railroad was mutated to incorporate a new cable railway return loop in 1846 so became a gravity-incline combination railway. A powered double incline plane road lead up to the top of two separate summits along Pisgah Ridge on the return leg (See "up track" on the map at right) and each summit had a down track returning the cars several miles farther west in each case. About the same time, when other mine heads were opened in lower elevations of the Panther Creek valley LC&N added several descending switchback sections and other cable railway inclines to bring the coal up to the Summit Hill loading area for the railway trip down to the Lehigh Canal and their clamoring customers. The railroad became an early American tourist attraction and is considered as the world's first roller coaster, a role it would keep and satisfy with tourists for over five decades after it was abandoned as a primary freight railroad."@en }

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