![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Duquesne-Incline-3.jpg\")
The Duquesne Incline upper station Credit: Mars Johnson \/ CP<\/p>\nIn the 1800s, before cars became a common occurrence on Steel City streets, if you were a Mount Washington or Duquesne Heights resident with somewhere to be, you had a 45-minute hike ahead of you. Enter: The Duquesne Incline, the result of years of manual labor. The incline opened on May 17, 1877 and shortened the trip to a mere 10 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These days, the incline serves as a tourist attraction, but, back when Mount Washington was known as Coal Hill, Tom Reinheimer, office manager of the Duquesne Incline, tells Pittsburgh City Paper that in its early years, the contraption was a lifeline for the working-class community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople in Mount Washington and Duquesne needed this piece of transportation to get down to the bottom to catch a trolley car across the river into work,\u201d Reinheimer said. \u201cSo the people up here really had a strong desire to keep it running.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Duquesne Incline upper station Credit: Mars Johnson \/ CP<\/p>\n
Currently, the Duquesne and Monongahela Inclines are the only two operating inclines in Pittsburgh, but Reinheimer notes that there was a time when the Steel City was home to over a dozen inclines<\/a>, which were used to transport coal and people.<\/a> In fact, it was the inclines scattered throughout the region that brought Samuel Diescher, the Duquesne Incline\u2019s Hungarian-born designer, across the ocean.\u00a0<\/p>\n Raised in Hungary and educated in Germany as a civil engineer, Diescher fell in love with cable cars, but he found that Germany and Switzerland weren\u2019t lacking in the technology he felt drawn to. That\u2019s why Diescher journeyed to Cincinnati, where he\u2019d supervise the construction<\/a> of his first-ever incline. Later, he came to Pittsburgh and worked with John Enders, who built the Monongahela Incline with the assistance of his daughter Caroline Enders, whom Diescher married.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Diescher\u2019s claim to fame might be the Duquesne Incline, in addition to inclines throughout the U.S., Reinheimer points out that Diescher also constructed the hoisting equipment used to make the first-ever Ferris Wheel, another Pittsburgh invention.<\/p>\n At an elevation of 30 degrees<\/a> with an 800-foot-long track<\/a>, Reinheimer says, the incline\u2019s two five-ton cars are built to hold 18 passengers each. Beneath the station, which houses a museum on the Duquesne Incline\u2019s history, visitors can see the machinery that keeps things running. In its original incarnation, the incline was powered by a steam engine until electrical equipment was installed by the George Westinghouse Company in 1932.<\/p>\n Through the years, Reinheimer tells Pittsburgh City Paper, while the Duquesne Incline\u2019s system has seen its share of refurbishment and repair, some of the original equipment, such as the drive gear and hoisting and safety cables responsible for taking the cable cars up and down the track, have withstood the test of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe engineers made this hoisting equipment out of cast iron, and so, pretty much as long as we keep everything painted and lubricated \u2014 and there\u2019s a guy lubricating it as we speak \u2014 it should outlast everybody on the planet,\u201d Reinheimer says.<\/p>\n Although the cables haven\u2019t cracked under pressure in the Duquesne Incline\u2019s 148-year history, there was a time when the Incline\u2019s future didn\u2019t seem so certain. In 1962, automobiles became more widely available, the incline needed repairs, ridership was down, and the Duquesne Incline closed its doors when the Duquesne Inclined Plane Company decided that keeping it running wasn\u2019t worth the cost. Longtime residents, however, disagreed with that assessment and ensured it reopened by 1963.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA group of concerned people who live up here in Mount Washington and Duquesne Heights got together, and they raised $19,000 [and] they made the necessary repairs,\u201d Reinheimer says. \u201dIt reopened six or seven months later in July of the next year.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been hiccups over the years, such as in 2019<\/a> when the\u00a0 Duquesne Incline\u2019s cars stopped for 30 minutes midway through a trip due to a mechanical failure<\/a> in its circuit board. Still, with its diesel generator, the Duquesne Incline is meant to keep running even in the event of power outages. If a repair needs to be made, according to Reinheimer, the workers try to ensure it happens when there are no passengers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s nothing that, generally, we can\u2019t fix in a few minutes or an hour or something like that,\u201d Reinheimer says. \u201cIf it\u2019s something major, we do that overnight, so we\u2019re not going to do that during the day while people are here.\u201d<\/p>\n Reinheimer recalls that there were times in Pittsburgh\u2019s history when, even when it was broad daylight due to the smoke and smog<\/a>, it would\u2019ve been impossible for an Incline passenger to see the view captured in postcards and on film. Yet, as the city drifted away from using coal<\/a> and clean air legislation began clearing the air<\/a> in the 1940s, less smoke cleared the way for the Duquesne Incline to become a tourist attraction that currently sees an estimated 482,000<\/a> passengers per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[At] the end of June, July, and August, it\u2019s mostly tourist groups, family groups, [and] people who come to ball games,\u201d Reinheimer says. \u201cThen it starts with the bus groups, again in the fall, and usually senior groups. They like to tour different cities and see things. We get most of our business now on tourism as opposed to transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n There was a time when school groups frequented the Duquesne Incline for field trips to learn about Pittsburgh history and the physics at play during the cable car trips up and down the tracks. However, Reinheimer says, after the pandemic, many of the teachers who\u2019d worked the field trips into their curricula had retired.\u00a0<\/p>\n For those still visiting, part of what makes the view available to all passengers is the fact that the Duquesne incline is actually a level car put on a triangle, meaning that whatever seat a person chooses goes around the perimeter of the car, so everybody has the same view. This is attributed to the cable cars having been designed with people in mind, as opposed to coal.\u00a0<\/p>\n From a $.05 fare in 1877 to the present-day $2.50, the Duquesne Incline has seen many chapters of the City of Bridges\u2019 story.\u00a0 Nearly 150 years into its run, the Duquesne Incline serves as a historical landmark and tourist attraction with a view that\u2019s been admired in films such as Flashdance, The Next Three Days, and Lady Beware. When thinking of what keeps visitors coming back year after year, Reinheimer believes that transplants and tourists are eager to be in a place where history and Pittsburgh\u2019s beauty collide.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot only did you get to ride a piece of history up there, but when you get to the top, you get a great view,\u201d Reinheimer says.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Duquesne-Incline-7.jpg\")
The inner workings of the Duqesne Incline Credit: Mars Johnson \/ CP<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Duquesne-Incline-8.jpg\")
The inner workings of the Duqesne Incline Credit: Mars Johnson \/ CP<\/p>\n