This is the historic Johnstown inclined plane in Pennsylvania. I have already shown you a few other inclines in the state, but this one is unique for a lot of different reasons. First, it is listed in the Guinness book of World records as the “The steepest vehicular inclined plane in the world”. What this means is that out of all the inclines that can carry vehicles, this is the steepest in the world. It has a slope of 35 degrees with a grade of 70.9 percent.

The fascinating part about the Johnstown incline is you that you can take your vehicle on it. This is my dash cam video and you can see how the operator is directing me to drive into the incline. Now after I stop my engine, I can sit in the car or come out and you can see how my car is now chocked with these concrete blocks. This is absolutely necessary. Why? Because we are on the steepest vehicular incline and my car will start rolling downhill without these blocks.

Johnstown incline is also the largest incline in the world. The cars are currently about 34 feet long, 15 feet wide and 15 feet tall but the cars were originally double-deckers. So before they changed the design into a single-decker in 1921, the incline was much bigger and was two storied. The upper deck was reserved for horses and wagons and the lower deck was used by passengers. They removed the upper deck because a few horses got spooked and jumped from the car onto the tracks below. So, even after removing the upper deck, the Johnstown incline is still the world’s largest funicular.

There is a fascinating story behind its construction. Unlike other inclines, the Johnstown incline was not created for transporting people up and down for everyday purposes. What happened was, in 1889 a huge flood nearly destroyed the entire town and killed over 2200 people. The residents realized that if they could build an incline that leads up to the hill, they could escape to higher ground in case of a flood. So this is the primary reason why this incline was built in 1891.

We have to give a lot of credit to the people who came up with this idea, because the incline saved more than 4,000 lives when another flood hit Johnstown in 1936. This incline operated continuously day and night during that time carrying a lot people to the mountain. Today it is recommended that only 60 people can ride this incline at one time, but during the flood, more than 150 people would ride it. Johnstown incline even saved horses and other animals. There was also another flood in 1977 and the incline was instrumental in transporting people and equipment up the hill.

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