File:Lehigh and Susquehanna R.R. cut, Solomon's Gap, by M. A. Kleckner.jpg

English: Historical: This photo is of a hand hewn level cutting over 75' deep through the top of the nominal 'Solomon Gap' mountain pass, with the northern end located above and connecting to the head end of the 3700 ft long 'Plane 1' of the historic Ashley Planes inclined plane cable railroad. Built and operated by the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad in 1837-38, the cutting serves to this day as a principle rail corridor from the Wyoming Valley to the Lehigh River and greater Delaware Valley regions; as it did from its inception serving the three-sectioned cable Railroad which lifted freight up grades as steep as 14.5% about 1000 ft from Ashland (Wilkes-Barre) to the hamlet of Fairview and Pneobscot (Now Mountain Top, PA) at about 1635 feet. The north end of the cutting lets out on a small level area used as a local marshalling yard and site of the upper plane's cable house, steam engine house, and car control shack—all a bit above Solomon Creek which runs off Mt. Penobscott's North face and formed the ravine the furnicular railway exploited to rapidly reach the flatter terrain in the Susquehanna Valley's bottom.

• The purpose of the cutting was to height match the ravine head end to the flatter bench area south of the pass where there was room enough to assemble economically large enough train consists, for the run down to the Lehigh Canal extension head at White Haven. The marshalling yard was necessary to manage costs since the cable-lifting operation could only lift 2-4 coal loaded cars at a time. Hence the southern end of the cutting lets out into a switching yard in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania (formerly Penobscot, PA after the Penobscot Mountain peak towering above to the east).
• The inclined railroad and cutting were made by the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (LH&S), a subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company built in 1837-1843 to connect the Pennsylvania Canal system (i.e. the Susquehanna River to the extended Lehigh Canal at White Haven, Pennsylvania. The LH&S later built and connected conventional trackage through a circuitous route traversing cross-slope as it descended through various Pennsylvania municipalities from Fairview through Avoca and Moosic before it could bend back along the valley bottom to connect and deliver returning empty coal hoppers to the mines of Wilkes-Barre. When floods wiped out the 26 mile north extension of the Lehigh Canal and its lock system, the LH&S accelerated construction of a railbed through the Lehigh Gorge, eventually having continuous trackage from its Pittston piers on the Susquehanna to Easton, Pennsylvania on the Delaware just outside of northern Philadelphia.
• The mainline right of way is part of a direct route across New Jersey from New York City and Philadelphia to the Great Lakes at Buffalo, NY via Sayre, PA.
• Subsequently, in the 1870s the LH&S leased all of its rail lines to the Central Railroad of New Jersey but retained ownership as a holding company and landlord. The line is now operated by the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern (RBMN) with the Norfolk Southern Railway and the Canadian Pacific (CPR, Delaware and Hudson Division) having leased trackage rights.
• This image dates post-1870 for at the far end high above the cutting's floor it shows a Steel trestle built by the competing Lehigh Valley Railroad used to cross from the slopes of one mountain (Penobscot) to Haystack Mountain, down who's slopes the LVRR traversed a more direct line to the Hazelton/South Wilkes-Barre valley floor—taking advantage of 35-40 years of power increases and the capabilities of steam locomotion. The LVRR also built a parallel line a few yards upslope from the lengthy LH&S 'back track' to Avoca/Moosic where a nexus of rail lines joined to reach North via Scranton, or South and West via the Susquehanna Valley through Wilkes-Barre.