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A July 2007 proposal was introduced by Roanoke City Councilmen to revive the Incline as an economic redevelopment tool. The new incline would be in the form of an automated people mover.
The Nunnery Hill Incline was a funicular in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, in what is now the Fineview neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Designed by Samuel Diescher, it operated from 1888 until 1895 between its base station on Federal Street to its upper station on the currently named Meadville Street. It was one of a few inclines with a curve in the track. The name of the hill derived from a short-lived settlement of Poor Clares earlier in the century.
The incline suspended operations without warning on 13 September 1895, to the consternation of many of the hill's residents. It did not resume business. By 1901, it was being dismantled.
Remnants of the incline, namely the red brick lower station and a stone retaining wall along Henderson Street, have been subject to preservation efforts. Both structures received City of Pittsburgh historic designations in 2011.
The Island Mountain Railway (Santa Catalina Island Incline Railway, or Angel's Flight) was a funicular railway at the resort town of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of California. The railway was unique because it not only ran from Avalon's amphitheater to the top of a nearby mountain but it also ran down the mountain's other side to Lovers' Cove. At the time of the railroad's operation Santa Catalina Island was a popular seaside destination. The railway opened in 1904 and closed in 1918, reopening in 1921 and closing again in 1923.
A single car carried passengers up from the amphitheater in Avalon to the top of the hill overlooking Avalon. A second car ran down the other side of the hill to Pebble Beach, in Lover's Cove.
Castle Shannon Incline Number 2 was an inclined cable railway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was originally designed by Samuel Diescher, and opened in 1892 as part of the Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Railroad as a means of transporting passenger traffic over Mt. Washington in concert with the Castle Shannon Incline (called Incline No. 1 while this one was still in service). From the top station at Bailey Street, adjacent to the Castle Shannon Incline top station, No. 2 ran down hill west of Haberman Avenue, ending at Warrington Avenue.
Pittsburgh Railways, a trolley system, took over the Castle Shannon passenger service in 1909 and routed their cars through the Mount Washington tunnel that is still in use today. The inclines were no longer part of a through route. Cars continued to run on No. 2 incline for a few years, but it was closed in 1914, with one daily trip being made for franchise purposes until 1919. An undated photograph shows a car with a body like a streetcar on the incline.
The Norwood Incline was a funicular railway located just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It operated from 1901 to 1923 between its lower station on Island Avenue, McKees Rocks, and its upper station in Norwood Place, Stowe Township. Originally free to ride, it got the nickname "Penny Incline" after it started charging a one-cent fare. Its two narrow-gauge tracks were formed by only three rails, the middle rail being shared by both tracks, except at mid-slope where the tracks separated to allow the upbound and downbound cars to pass each other.
Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company
The Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company was a railroad and coal transportation company, founded in 1899 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was formed by merging more than 80 independent coal mines and river transportation businesses, both in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Initially, it had an agreement with the Pittsburgh Coal Company to ship its coal only by water, and not to compete with it by using rail transport, but the agreement was ended in 1902. It merged with the Pittsburgh Coal Company on 24 December 1915.
The company had a railroad and mine along Becks Run. The railroad was originally opened in 1878 (the same year that the mine opened) as a narrow gauge line by the H.B. Hays and Brothers Coal Railroad.
One important part of the business was the riverboat "Sprague", nicknamed "Big Mama", a steam powered sternwheeler towboat capable of pushing 56 coal barges at once. A model of the "Sprague" is in the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa.
The Seventh Avenue West Incline ran in Duluth, Minnesota, from 1891 until 1939, when the tracks were sold for scrap for the war effort.
There have been several different incline railways built at the Niagara Falls, on the border between Canada and the United States.
The Mount Beacon Incline Railway was a narrow gauge incline railway up Beacon Mountain near Beacon, New York. A popular local tourist attraction, it operated for much of the 20th century, providing sweeping views of the Hudson River Valley. Efforts to restore it continue today.
The Otis Elevator Company and Mohawk Construction opened the 2,200' gauge railway on Memorial Day, 1902. Sixty thousand fares were sold in its first year; two decades later that had almost doubled. Riders were often day visitors from New York City who came up the Hudson River by steamboat to Newburgh and then took the Newburgh-Beacon Ferry across the river. After a trolley trip to the base station on Wolcott Avenue (today NY 9D), the railway would take them up to the northern summit via an average gradient of 65% (33°) and a maximum gradient of 74% (36.5°), the steepest in existence while the railroad operated.
Thanks to the automobile replacing historic mass transit to the area - which had brought passengers en masse up the river in excursion boats, via the railroad, and thence trolley right to the base of the lift - recreational patterns changed and the Beacon attraction never regained its popularity. Financial problems and more fires plagued the concern, which was unable to maintain necessary maintenance on either the railway or the summit attractions.
In 1978 the railway ceased operations. In 1982 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. A fire attributed to vandalism the next year completely destroyed the trackway and consumed the lower station, following which the only remaining structure at the top, the powerhouse, was raised. The route still remains and is visible from much of the city. The Mount Beacon Incline Railway Restoration Society is working to rebuild the railroad and restore service.
The Clifton Incline was a funicular that operated from 1889 to 1905 in what is now the Perry Hilltop neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It extended from its base at Sarah Street (now Strauss Street) at the intersection with Myrtle Street (now the closed Metcalf Street) to its top landing at Clifton Park near the end of Clifton Street (now Chautauqua Street).
Businessman William McCreery co-founded the incline to facilitate access to a residential neighborhood developed from his former estate. The Clifton Avenue Incline Plane Company, formed for the purpose of erecting and operating the incline, was chartered on June 25, 1888. Within a year of that date, McCreery offered free incline rides to property auctions on the hill.
There were two cars, only one of which carried passengers, the other one being a dummy car serving as a counterweight. A single operator performed the duties of engineer, conductor, and fireman.
The incline closed after an accident on November 10, 1905, in which the passenger car—empty at the time—broke loose, hurtled down the track, plowed through the waiting room on Sarah Street and smashed into the front steps of a house.
On October 7, 1953 a boy, Alan Schiller, hanging from a car was killed. While it is commonly reported that Pittsburgh inclines recorded no fatalities, this, along with an incident on the St. Clair Incline, provide the only blemishes on the safety record of inclines in Pittsburgh. None of the fatalities occurred with paying passengers who had not jumped from cars.
The Mount Lowe Railway was the third in a series of scenic mountain railroads in America created as a tourist attraction on Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe, north of Los Angeles, California. The railway, originally incorporated by Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe as the Pasadena & Mt. Wilson Railroad Co., existed from 1893 until its official abandonment in 1938, and had the distinction of being the only scenic mountain, electric traction (overhead electric trolley) railroad ever built in the United States. Lowe's partner and engineer was David J. Macpherson, a civil engineer graduate of Cornell University. The Mount Lowe Railway was a fulfillment of 19th century Pasadenans' desire to have a scenic mountain railroad to the crest of the San Gabriel Mountains.
The Railway opened on July 4, 1893, and consisted of nearly seven miles (11.2 km) of track starting in Altadena, California, at a station called Mountain Junction. Atop Echo stood the magnificent 70-room Victorian hotel, the Echo Mountain House. Only a few hundred feet away stood the 40-room Echo Chalet which was ready for opening day. The complement of buildings on Echo included an astronomical observatory, car barns, dormitories and repair facilities, a casino and dance hall, and a menagerie of local fauna.
For the seven years during which Lowe owned and operated the railway, it constantly ran into hard times, eventually being sold off. A series of natural disasters ate away at the facilities, the first of which was a kitchen fire that destroyed the Echo Mountain House in 1900. Further fires and floods eventually destroyed any remaining facilities, and the railway was officially abandoned in 1938 after a flood washed most everything off the mountain sides. Today, the ruins of Mount Lowe Railway remain as a monument to a once-ever experienced enterprise. It was placed on the National Register of Historical Places on January 6, 1993, a listing that was enlarged in January 2015.
The railway terminal, called Mountain Junction, was located at the corner of Lake Avenue and Calaveras Street in the unincorporated community of Altadena. The line was divided into 3 divisions: the Mountain Division, the Great Incline, and the Alpine Division. The mode of locomotion was electric traction railway, and a cable driven incline funicular. Electrical power for the railway consisted of several power generating stations equipped with either gas engines or Pelton wheels, depending on the availability of mountain water.
From this platform passengers could transfer to a narrow gauge, three-railed inclined plane railway, the "Great Incline," and ascend Echo Mountain (elev. ). The Incline powering mechanism was designed by San Francisco cable car inventor Andrew Smith Hallidie. It boasted grades as steep as 62% and as slight as 48%, and gained in elevation. The Great Incline was the first of its kind built with three rails and featuring a four-railed passing track at the halfway point. A particular feature on the Incline was the Macpherson Trestle named by Lowe for his engineer, David J. Macpherson, as was custom, and noted for its exceptional design in crossing a granite chasm over deep.
The Mount Lowe Railway was born from a desire of the Pasadena Pioneers to have a scenic mountain railroad to the crest of the San Gabriel Mountains. There was already established a trail to the peak of Mount Wilson, but that trip was arduous and ofttimes required more than a day to travel up and down. Several proposals were floated to establish some sort of mechanical transportation to the summits, but they all lacked funding.
David J. Macpherson (b. 1854, Ontario, Canada), a civil engineer from Cornell University and a newcomer to Pasadena (1885), proposed a steam driven cog wheel train to reach the crest via Mount Wilson. It wasn't until he was introduced to the millionaire Thaddeus S. C. Lowe (arrived in Pasadena 1890) that a fully funded plan could be put into action. The two men visited Colorado to view the mountain railway to Pike's Peak. Lowe was impressed with the trolley car systems in the city and thought that should be the way to go. This would make the Mount Lowe Railway the only electric traction rail line ever to be put into scenic mountain railway service.
The two men incorporated the Pasadena & Mount Wilson Railroad Co. in 1891 with intentions to build the railroad to Mount Wilson. Unable to obtain rights of way to Mt. Wilson, Macpherson suggested an alternate route, toward Oak Mountain, a high peak to the west of Mount Wilson. They hired electrical engineer, Almarian W. Decker, who had contrived all the mathematical possibilities of an electric line and the funicular which would be required to ascend the Echo Mountain Promontory.
Blasting into the Rubio Canyon began in September 1892, three months before the establishment of the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve (now Angeles National Forest). A terminal was built at the corner of Calaveras Street and Lake Avenue in Altadena adjacent to the L. A. Terminal Railway station, and a narrow gauge line was laid up the 8% grade to a point near Las Flores Street where it turned eastward traversing the Poppyfields district and headed into Rubio Canyon.
At the Rubio division terminus was built a broad platform to span the Canyon which included the Rubio Pavilion, a 12-room hotel, with dining facilities and other amenities. The pavilion also consisted of power generating facilities with the use of gas engines and Pelton waterwheels. Water was made available from reservoirs built in the canyon's streams, though water was not always plentiful year round. As part of the entertainment experience, Lowe had a series of stairways and bridges built over the streams and waterfalls that emanated from the canyon. The eleven waterfalls were individually named and today exist as local historical landmarks.
A great feat of engineering was realized with a trestle that was built to negotiate a granite chasm across of track on a 62% grade. The trestle was named, as was customary in railroad constructions, for the chief engineer, David Macpherson, thus, the Macpherson Trestle.
The Great Incline cable mechanism was engineered by Andrew Smith Hallidie of San Francisco cable car fame. It climbed with approximately of cable spliced into a complete loop which raised and lowered the cars of the Incline. At the Echo summit an incline powerhouse was erected to house the winding motor and gear works which powered the grip wheel. The wheel consisted of 72 clamping "finger" mechanisms which bit down on the cable creating a smooth, non-slip actuation of the winding cable.
The cable was a -inch (41.275 mm) steel cable spliced in two spots, one below each of the incline passenger cars and looped in a continuous strand around the grip wheel at the top of the incline and a tension wheel at the bottom.
The incline grade changed three times from a steep 62% grade at the base to a gentler 48% grade at the top, but the cars were designed to comfortably adjust to the differences in grade. The incline was also equipped with a safety cable which ran through an emergency braking mechanism under each car and provided an emergency stopping of the cars within should a failure of the main cable occur.
The Echo Mountain site was ready for opening day, July 4, 1893, with the 40-room "Echo Chalet." By November 1894 the 80-room Victorian "Echo Mountain House" was completed as a luxury facility to rival the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego.
Prof. Lowe's success was greatly drawn from his nationally renowned process of generating large amounts of hydrogen gas (see water gas). He had built a gas plant in Pasadena and had piped the gas some eight miles (13 km) to the top of Echo where there was a storage container seen in several earlier photographs. The technology, mainly used for heating and lighting, was soon replaced by electricity.
Echo Mountain also sported a menagerie (zoo) which housed several species of local fauna: lynxes, raccoons, snakes, squirrels, and even a black bear. Alongside the zoo was a dormitory and shop facility for maintenance of the trains.
Lowe purchased a three million candlepower searchlight from the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. The light was installed on Echo in 1894. So powerful was the light, that a claim by Lowe's publicist, George Wharton James, stated that he could read a newspaper by the beam of the light coming through his hotel window on Catalina Island. Exaggeration or not, the beam from the light did have a projection. Residents announcing their birthdays could have the light shone on their homes in the evening. It was also known to stir up a corral of horses, invade lovers’ privacy, and interrupt an evening's revival meeting. By the 1930s the light was considered a public nuisance and was shut off permanently.
A third division, the Alpine Division, was begun in 1894 and took a lengthy stretch of narrow gauge track across three canyons to the foot of Mount Lowe (formerly Oak Mountain). The line ran from alongside the incline landing where passengers could transfer directly to the next trolley. There were three trains available on this line, but the limited electrical power only allowed one at a time to travel. The line set out across the broad Las Flores Canyon which gave a tremendous panorama of the Los Angeles area below. At one point a tall trestle was required to bridge a broad and deep chasm with a bridge so named High Bridge.
This spot marked the end of the line, nearly 7 miles (11.2 km) from its starting point at Mountain Junction.
The Mount Lowe Railway opened officially on July 4, 1893. Folks amassed themselves at the remote Mountain Junction. Up to this point there was only one means of public transportation from the valleys below to the hillside community of Altadena. It was the Los Angeles Terminal Railway which by this time was running from Terminal Island in San Pedro to Mountain Junction. The trains ran twice a day, and very irregularly at that, so the only sure means of getting to Altadena on time was by your own horse and buggy. This lack of transportation, coupled with Lowe's inability to establish any at all, would be in part the downfall of the railway.
Nevertheless, over its 45 years of existence, it is estimated that some 3 million people had ridden the railway, many coming from all parts of the country and the world. In its own inimitable way, it was a Disneyland of the day. Lowe had two favorite days of the year, Independence Day and Christmas, during which he would mark special events of his lifetime. A publication which emanated from the Tavern daily was the "Echo", a preprinted newspaper with a blank page that had the names and home states of the daily arrivals surprinted. The four-page tabloid had three pages of biographical information on the railroad and other announcements of daily events.
At the top of the incline was perched Charles Lawrence, the official photographer, on a special scaffold from which he would take pictures of the arriving visitors. For 25 cents, visitors could purchase a souvenir photo of their arrival on the incline car, with everyone else aboard, of course. George Wharton James, Lowe's publicist, had his own publication which touted the railway in its conception, construction, and operation.
Megaphones, called "echophones", were installed on Mount Echo through which visitors could bellow into the back canyons and receive a number of echoes. The "sweet spot" where the most repeaters could be heard had at least nine reverberations of anything that was shouted loud enough. The study of the sweet spot has even been used as boy scout projects.
Along the way in Millard Canyon, a special station stop was made at Dawn Station above the Dawn Mines, an old gold mining operation. The mines were deep in the canyon and visitors stopping off to see the digs spent an exorbitant amount of time getting back to the train. A false adit was dug just a hundred feet below the track to trick people into thinking they had visited the mine and were shortly ready to return to the train.
The mountain itself offered a grand display of nature and hiking trails, plus a mule ride, the "Mount Lowe Eight," that transported guests around a trail. This trail made a large figure eight traverse of Mt. Lowe and Mount Echo, starting and ending at the Alpine Tavert without ever traversing the same terrain twice.
In 1922 Henry Ford visited the Mount Lowe Railway and returned with a Hollywood filming crew who made a silent film documentary of the trip with the camera mounted on the various cars, including the Great Incline. of this historic film is available at the Library of Congress.
In 1900, the Echo Mountain House burned down. It was grossly underinsured and was never rebuilt. Later, the astronomer Dr. Swift went blind and was forced to leave his post at the observatory. A second astronomer, Prof. Edgar Lucien Larkin (1847–1925), was hired to oversee the observatory. Though he was not as prominent as Prof. Swift, he did stay with the Mount Lowe Observatory until his sudden death in 1925. Disenchanted, Peyton sold the railway to Henry E. Huntington, after which it became part of the Pacific Electric Railway (PE), of the famed Los Angeles Red Car system.
Part of the P&E improvements included a "casino" on Echo Mountain. The building appears in a few rare photos and was described as a dance hall, not a gambling facility. Most historians believe that the casino was built only a few months before the fire of 1905. The blaze began when a forceful wind blew the roof from the casino onto the power generating station across the track, setting a fire that razed everything on Echo except the observatory and the astronomer's cabin. The only part of the Echo operation that was restored was the Incline Powerhouse in 1906. Other improvements were made to the railway, such as the replacement of rock pile footings under each trestle with reinforced concrete pilings.
In 1909, an unseasonable electrical storm and flash flood destroyed the Rubio Pavilion and buried one of the caretakers’ children in the mud. The injured parents spent years in the hospital recuperating from the devastation that left them trapped in the rubble of the Pavilion. Three of the children, who knew how to move the incline cars, escaped to the top of the incline.
In 1928 a strong Santa Ana Wind blew down the observatory. Its curator at the time, Mt. Lowe photographer Charles Lawrence, escaped the collapse within an inch of his life. Fortunately, he had the foresight to pack up the expensive lens pieces ahead of time. The instrument has since been reinstalled at Santa Clara University.
In 1925 a large block brick annex was added to "Ye Alpine Tavern" and the facility was renamed "Mount Lowe Tavern." In September 1936 the tavern burned to the ground from an electrical fire. The P&E was officially out of business, but left train operators on the line, so as not to abandon the railway. Though there was a slight consideration to rebuild, lack of water, poor area for relocation, and the financial burden of construction and insurance left the P&E all but giving up on the Mount Lowe Railway.
In December, 1937, the Railroad Booster's Club, enthusiasts of the P&E Railroad, requested a final paid excursion on the line for photos and memorabilia. A few months later, in March, 1938 a three-day deluge of rain destroyed what was left of the railway and stranded the caretakers on Echo for 17 days. Following this disaster, the railway was officially abandoned.
The Red Car line ran into Altadena until 1941. At the onset of World War II, the dismantling of the Mount Lowe Railway was contracted to a scrapper who stripped the railway of all salvageable materials. In 1959 the Forestry service began dynamiting the remains of buildings as "hazardous nuisances." In 1962 the Incline Powerhouse was dynamited, but the gear mechanism was placed as a monument to the enterprise.
In 2005 Stacey Camp began an archaeological dig on a section of Mount Echo where there once stood a barrack for workers. The dig is part of Camp's Doctoral thesis and has come about by a grant from Stanford University and is also being coordinated with the Forestry Service.
The Duluth Beltline Railway, also known as the "West Duluth Incline" or the "Bay View Incline", was first operated in 1889 and operated as a one-car operation until 1892. The Duluth News Tribune wrote an article on May 8, 1890 and called the railway "the longest of its kind in the world." The line had several stations along the route including between Bayview Heights and the Marinette/Iron Bay Works, and on Central Avenue where it met the streetcar tracks.
The Western State Normal Railroad, also known as the Normal Railroad or Western Trolley, was a funicular which operated on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the United States from 1908–1949. It is the only known example of a private railroad operated by a university.
In the early 1900s the primary campus of Western Michigan University, then known as Western State Normal School, was located on Prospect Hill (this area is now known as East Campus). To reach the buildings students and faculty faced a forbidding 150 step-climb, often in inclement weather. In an effort to address this problem, the school constructed a funicular along the northeast corner of the hill. The base of the line was at Davis Street, while the summit lay between East Hall and North Hall. There were two tracks, each with a cable-hauled car.
At its peak the railroad carried 2,280 passengers daily, but rising maintenance costs combined with the growing popularity of the automobile hastened its demise, and it carried its last passenger in 1949.
In 2002 four senior engineering majors at WMU embarked on a project to build a replica of one of the trolleys. This proved no easy task: following the closure of the railroad in 1949, no effort was made to preserve the cars. The only physical remnant was a bench saved by a faculty member; while there were sketches and photographs for reference, no actual blueprints had survived. Commenting on the situation a WMU official remarked that "back then was a period in history so intent on the future, that everyone started forgetting about the past."
Despite these challenges, the students successfully completed their project, which was unveiled April 8, 2003, and currently occupies a prominent place in front of the Bernhard Center on Western's primary campus. Local residents and Western alumni who had ridden the trolley testified to the authenticity of the restoration.
The Otis Elevating Railway was a narrow gauge cable funicular railroad leading to the Catskill Mountain House in Palenville, New York. For the first 64 years of its existence, the Catskill Mountain House was accessible only by a long stagecoach from Catskill Landing on the Hudson. Faced with increased competition from the Hotel Kaaterskill (served by the Kaaterskill Railroad), Charles Beach hired the Otis Elevator Company to build a cable funicular railroad straight up the Great Wall of Manitou. Opening on August 7, 1892, the line measured long with a rise of , a maximum grade of 34%, and an average grade of 12%. In 1904, the line was shortened and the lower trestle eliminated.
A cable pulled the specially-designed passenger cars up the mountain, hooking a mechanism from the car onto the cable. To balance the system there were two cars which could each seat 75 passengers. The cars were built by Jackson & Sharp Co. in 1892. The cars were named "Rickerson" and "Van Santvoord". A small open-air baggage car was coupled to the downhill end of each passenger car.
The cable was pulled by two Hamilton Corliss steam engines that spun a set of cogwheels that drove the cable. Each engine had a diameter bore and a stroke. Steam was supplied by two Manning Patent vertical tubular boilers. As one car went up from the bottom of the incline, the other car went down from the top of the incline. There was a passing track in the middle of the run where the track split in two and then rejoined. This was so the cars could pass each other without colliding, as they shared the center rail above and below the passing track.
The Otis Railway and the Catskill Mountain Railway had several freight cars interchangeable with both the Catskill and Tannersville Railway at Summit Station and the Catskill Mountain Railway at Junction Station. The freight cars were long and had a capacity of . One car could be carried at a time coupled below the coach. Boxcars were Otis Ry. 1, Otis Ry. 2, C.M. Ry. 17 & C.M. Ry. 18. Gondolas were Otis Ry. 3, Otis Ry. 4, C.M. Ry. 15 & C.M. Ry. 16. In operation, a single freight car could be coupled to the downhill end of the open-air baggage car.
The Otis Junction station (pictured right after the 1904 reconstruction) connected the Otis to the Catskill Mountain Railway, a railroad between Catskill Landing and Palenville, New York. At the Otis Summit station at the top, it connected to the Catskill and Tannersville Railway, that ran the to Tannersville. In 1918, all three railroads were closed and sold for scrap. The two cars survive to this day. Soon after the railroad was scrapped, the coaches were shipped to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they served the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway.
Abraham Kirkpatrick Lewis was a pioneer coal miner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
His namesake was his grandfather, Abraham Kirkpatrick, a colleague of General John Neville. He graduated from Kenyon College, Ohio, in 1835. Although he
studied medicine and law, he made his living in the coal industry. With William Philpot and John M.Snowden Jr., he was the first to establish a market and furnish a regular supply of Pittsburgh coal to New Orleans, transporting the coal on flatboats.
His Coal Ridge Mine on Sawmill Run, opened in 1857, was originally served by a horse-drawn tramway, later converted to steam power as the Little Saw Mill Run Railroad.
The Kirk Lewis incline was used to transport coal from "Coal Hill", now known as Mt. Washington, to the Monongahela River. It has been described as the first incline in Pittsburgh. It was probably built by George W. Roberts Sr., the superintendent of his mines, who was known to have built many coal inclines in the area, including those at Elizabeth, Pennsylvania.
The St. Clair Incline, also known as the "South Twenty-second Street Incline", was built in 1886–1888 and operated by St. Clair Incline Plane Company. It was a double track
incline on the South Side Slopes of Pittsburgh from Josephine St. to Salisbury St. The lower station was near the intersection of S. 22nd Street and Josephine. The upper station was on Salisbury Street across from the former Fort Laughlin site eventually occupied by Arlington Playground.
The incline was long, with a vertical rise of . It was designed by engineer J. H. McRoberts. As it carried both freight and passengers over steep tracks laid on the ground, it could be considered to be a cable railway. Its path was not of constant slope but became progressively steeper toward the top, tracing a parabolic arc. It is uncertain exactly when the incline closed permanently, but it was reported as shut down in a 1932 Associated Press article about the "passing" of Pittsburgh's inclines. The structure was dismantled in 1934.
On July 22, 1915, a car ran over a 19-month-old baby who attempted to follow his two older sisters across the tracks.
Another fatality occurred on March 10, 1919, when a gate on one of the moving cars swung open. A 17-year-old girl who had been leaning on the gate fell to the tracks and was run over by the car wheels.
It was operated as a gravity plane, with returning empty cars being pulled to the mine mouth by the weight of the descending full coal cars.
The Keeling Coal Company (1861-1878) was a 19th-century coal mining company in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Its mines were located in the Pittsburgh Coalfield of western Pennsylvania.
The Ormsby mine was an underground coal mine, originally opened in 1838 by the son-in law of Oliver Ormsby, John Harding Page and Captain Phillips. The mine was served by a gravity plane, or incline, built between 1838 and 1844. It was operated by Doctor Oliver Harrison Ormsby, the son of the above named Oliver Ormsby, from 1851 to 1861.
The Keeling Coal Company operated it from 1861 to May 1878. It was then taken over by the Birmingham Coal Company, which had Joseph Keeling as one of its partners. The mine was extensive, eventually connecting to the nearby Bausman Mine, which Keeling also operated.
Coal from this mine was used in early steam engine experiments by the U.S. Navy on the "Michigan".
An underground transportation system connecting the Ormsby mine with other local coal mines was begun in 1867. Like many mine railroads in the Pittsburgh area, this was a narrow gauge line.
In addition to the incline from the Ormsby mine, the Keeling company ran a separate incline for coal, this one with a curve, that in part ran parallel to the lower end of the Mt. Oliver Incline.
Later the Knoxville Incline was built parallel to it.
The Monongahela Freight Incline was a funicular railway that scaled Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
Designed by Samuel Diescher and John Endres, the incline was built beside the smaller, original Monongahela Incline. It opened in 1884. The incline cost $125,000 to build. It had a unique broad gauge that would allow vehicles, as well as passengers to ascend and descend the hill. The cars were hoisted by a pair of Robinson & Rea engines. The incline ran until 1935. The older passenger incline still runs today, and concrete pylons from the freight incline can be seen during the descent.
The Mount Oliver Incline was a funicular on the South Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was designed in 1871 by the Prussian engineer John Endres and his daughter Caroline Endres. Its track was 1600 feet long and gained 377 feet of elevation. It ran from the corner of Freyburg and South Twelfth Streets at its lower end to Warrington Avenue at its upper end. It was closed on 6 July 1951.
The Penn Incline, also known as the 17th Street Incline, was a funicular railroad that ran between the Strip and Hill districts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It operated from 1884 to 1953.
The incline ascended from 17th Street between Liberty and Penn avenues in the Strip District to Arcena (Ridgeway) Street near Ledlie Street in the Hill District. It measured 840 feet in length with a vertical rise of 330 feet. It was structurally massive, with over 750 tons of bridge work carrying the two 10-foot-gauge tracks over the Pennsylvania Railroad yards, Bigelow Boulevard, and Liberty Avenue. A writer in the "Street Railway Journal" in 1891 believed that it was "probably the most heavily built plane in existence".
The incline was built to the design of Samuel Diescher with the aim of hoisting 20-ton coal loads to the top of the hill. It entered service on 1 March 1884. While the coal traffic never materialized to expectations, railroad and business activity in the Strip District generated enough passengers and freight to keep the incline operating. Customers included produce merchants transporting their goods from wholesale markets in the Strip.
A saloon and entertainment hall called the Penn Incline Resort existed for several years next to the upper landing. This resort, patterned after similar hilltop attractions in Cincinnati, was built together with the incline to boost business. It enjoyed early popularity and according to "The Pittsburg Dispatch" was "a favorite resort for the better class of Germans". With the implementation in 1888 of Pennsylvania's Brooks High License Law, the resort stopped selling liquor and went into decline. The building was destroyed in 1892 by a fire that spread from the incline's boiler house.
In 1927, a stunt driver guided a Willys–Overland Whippet automobile up and down the incline in a promotional spectacle to demonstrate the car's climbing and braking prowess. A plankway specially built for the occasion prevented the car's wheels from lodging between the rail ties.
By the end of World War II, business was struggling. The incline was open only three hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon when its last owner, Pittsburgh Railways, asked the state Public Utilities Commission permission to abandon it. Nobody opposed the request. The incline shut down on 30 November 1953 and within the next three years was dismantled.
There has been talk among city planners of reviving the incline, but no such idea has come to fruition. In 2020, mayor Bill Peduto suggested relinking the Strip and Hill districts with a gondola lift that could also extend to the Oakland neighborhood.
The H.B. Hays and Brothers Coal Railroad was a narrow gauge railroad opened in 1878 to carry coal from the Hays family mines along Becks Run and Streets Run in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Both branches included an incline, and both are visible in the engravings below, one just south of Six Mile Ferry, the other in the hills south of the mouth of Becks Run. The mines, railroads, and inclines were designed by Pittsburgh engineer John H. McRoberts.
Angels Flight is a landmark narrow gauge funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district of Downtown Los Angeles, California. It has two funicular cars, "Olivet" and "Sinai", running in opposite directions on a shared cable, on the long inclined railway.