Inclined+to+Build

by Kate Quinn

Samuel Diescher built the incline plane that was built 120 years ago in [|Mozart Park]. Here is his story.

Samuel Diescher was born in Budapest, Hungary, July 25, 1839. He received his education at the Carlsruhe Polytechnic College, Germany, and at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. For a number of years, he traveled throughout Europe working as a mechanical designer for various industrial concerns. In 1866, at the age of 27, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. For a year he worked as a designer at the Niles Tool Works, eventually assuming charge of construction of an incline plane in the city.

Diescher came to Pittsburgh in early 1870 and met John Endres. Through his association with Endres, Diescher began designing incline planes. Diescher eventually established an independent engineering practice opening an office in the Hamilton Building at Sixth Street and Penn Avenue Downtown.

Street railway construction gained his attention, and in the years 1881-1882, he completed the building of the Perrysville Avenue Electric Line, the old Squirrel Hill Electric Line and the South 13th and Mt. Oliver Line. The Perrysville Avenue Line was the first road to utilize an underground system for supplying electric current to the motors. The Pittsburgh, Knoxville and St. Clair railroad consisted of a rack railroad on its steeper grades, an innovation for the time.

Diescher's work included the designing and construction of a large number of coke plants, coal washing plants and special machinery. The majority of the heavy incline planes in use in the United States were designed by Diescher. Those in Pittsburgh included the Penn or 17th Street, Monongahela (reconstruction), Monongahela Freight, Duquesne, Fort Pitt, Nunnery Hill, both Castle Shannon Planes, the Troy Hill, Mt. Oliver, Clifton and Ridgewood incline planes.

Incline plane commissions outside Pittsburgh included: the Cambria Incline, Johnstown (1889-93, 1903); Duluth Incline Railroad, Minnesota (1889-90); East McKeesport (Allegheny County), Incline (1912); Girardot and Cambao Inclines, Columbia, South America (1897); Hamilton Mt. Park Incline, Canada (1913); Jumonville Incline, Uniontown (1901); Ligonier Incline (no date); Mozart Park Incline, Wheeling, W.Va. (1892-93); Ohio Street Incline, Cleveland (1894-95); Orange Mountain Incline, Orange, N.J. (1889); Seventh Avenue Incline, Duluth, Minn. (1890-91); Weehauken Incline, N.J. (no date).

Note by Chuck Wood: [|Apparently] the Weehauken Incline was built in 1893.

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