Incline railway cars on a steep track above a town

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Two cars sit on a steep incline, their wooden bodies angled so the floor stays level as the track climbs the hillside above the town. Cable-hauled inclines like this one were a common solution in the late 1800s, when mountain and river-bluff towns needed a way to move people and freight up slopes too steep for an ordinary locomotive. Passengers rode these cars to hotels and overlooks, and the cars' tilted frames show how engineers worked around grade rather than against it. Look closely at the track bed and the cable line to see how the whole system depended on a single winding engine at the top.

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