Have to go up a REALLY steep slope?
14 Amazing, Gravity-Defying Funiculars - Atlas Obscura
List of funicular railways - Wikipedia
Out west they were called inclines
Even the Pennsy - well…its forbearer
Don’t forget the Carmelite, the Haifa Subway.
I had no idea there were so many. I’ve ridden on one in Naples and have done the Monagahela in Pittsburgh. Also the Bridgenorth in the U.K. The coaches? Cars? Carriages? on that one look like a 1950s bus.
Growing up in Cincinnati, I learned about them. The Mt. Adams incline was still in operation until 1948. Others had closed before I moved to Cincinnati. I rode it multiple times and it carried streetcars as did three others.
For some reason, Price Hill had two, side by side. One was for freight and I think the other was passenger only. The rest carried streetcars.
Cincinnati had Five locations:
http://sites.rootsweb.com/~ohhamilt/picsinclines.html
Price Hill 1 Passenger
Price Hill 2 Freight
https://www.facebook.com/pricehillhistory/
Fairview
Clifton
Mt. Auburn
Mt. Adams
When built, all were steam powered.
I was facinated by the two switches that automatically routed the arriving streetcar to the empty incline car, while the discharged streetcar always left on the outbound track. Done with spring switches and trail and stay switches.
Cincinnati got a new streetcar line but I doubt they will build a NEW incline.
The Cincinnati inclines were a source of fascination to me as well, but they were gone just before I was born. Mt. Adams Incline appears from time to time as a civic restoration project, but nothing ever becomes of it. (They served well when the town’s population density was so much greater than it is now. Even with the re-gentrification of older parts of the city, those population densities will never approach those levels again. The post WW2 spread to the suburbs and the automobile did inclines and the unfinished subway -in as industry moved-up the Mill Creek and Miami (Little/Great) valleys)
Video here: https://youtu.be/eZcnoGg9vBs