 The Johnstown Inclined Plane was designed by Hungarian engineer Samuel Diescher, who had also designed the Duquesne, Castle Shannon and Fort Pitt Inclines in Pittsburgh. The funicular consists of a parallel set of 8 ft (2,440 mm) broad gauge railroad tracks with a 70.9 percent grade or an angle of 35 degrees and 28 minutes from the horizontal. The incline is 896.5 feet (273.3 m) long and ascends 502.2 feet (153.1 m) vertically to the top of Yoder Hill and the borough of Westmont, the station of which is at an elevation of 1,693.5 feet (516.2 m) above sea level. The rails are supported by 720 14-foot-long (4 m) railroad ties made from Southern Yellow Pine. The incline is lit at night by 114 high-pressure sodium-vapor lamps mounted along the sides of tracks. There used to be a stairway between the two tracks with 966 steps, but these were removed circa 1963.
