SAXONBURG - Do you think cable cars are the province of hilly San Francisco? Think again.

Think of a nearby city with lots of hills too steep for a loaded omnibus to climb easily: Pittsburgh.

Even more surprising, the "grip" conveyance system that makes the machinery in a multi-seat carriage grip and release the moving cable circulating in a trench under the street had its beginnings here.

This tidbit, and lots more about "Pittsburgh Inclines and Street Railways" is revealed in the recently released history book of the same name by Saxonburg resident Howard Worley.

According to Worley's book, it was Murry Adolphus Verner, a machinist early in life and later a Pittsburgh capitalist with interests in several inclines and street railways, who brought the idea of traction power into play.

"There was quite an elaborate cable car network" pulling public conveyances around the Pittsburgh area at the turn of the 20th century, Worley said.

While Pittsburgh newspapers coined the term "rapid transit" in an era where omnibuses really did use horsepower to slowly drag people-laden cars from place to place, it was the invention by the "electric wizard" Thomas Edison that made street railways into a mass transit system, Worley said.

Not to mention how an electrified power transfer system made the streets cleaner with fewer horses plodding the avenues from early until late.

"Pittsburgh Inclines and Railways" highlights the growth of Pittsburgh from 1850 through 1900 and outlines how a reliable public transportation system made it happen by allowing the expansion coupled with a decrease in travel time.

Inner-city transportation systems connected with each other and with the other public transportation systems servicing outlying areas, like the Harmony Short Line

,

which passed through the Cranberry area. That rail line brought life to towns such as Sarver, Cabot and Marwood.

Rail travel, whether it was along streets or through the countryside, or in the case of inclined

planes,

up the face of what had been formidable rises, helped to populate areas, said Worley. The availability for average folk to traverse greater distances seated rather than on foot made it possible for new neighborhoods to spring up.

The new housing areas were necessary to accommodate the influx of workers and ancillary businesses and services that came to rebuild Pittsburgh after the great fire of 1845, he explained.

In 1850, Pittsburgh's population was 46,601. "Twenty years later that total had grown to 86,076. By the turn of the century, Pittsburgh counted 321,616 citizens," states Worley in his book.

"Without that fire, the city would have never achieved its greatness," according to Worley.

During those booming, building-growth years, inclined planes, or funiculars as they are otherwise known, sprouted up hillsides on both sides of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio riverbeds. In all there were at least 18 inclines that carried passengers and freight as well as horses and the various wheeled contraptions they pulled.

Based on technology invented by the Germans, incline design was fine-tuned in Pittsburgh for Pittsburgh.

By the end of the 19th century, Pittsburgh had more inclines than any other city in the world and one of the only two with a curve in the tracks.

While the wheres and hows of Pittsburgh's inclines and street railways are important to his book, Worley also spends a considerable bit of the text highlighting the whos that made it happen and a few of the whys, too.

Reading it, you'll see names you know but didn't realize had anything to do with mass transit. And a few of the reasons why a particular area was favored with a public transportation system can be surprising.

"Pittsburgh Inclines and Street Railways" contains 150 photographs, graphs and charts, some in color. Worley credits the Carnegie Library, University of Pittsburgh, The Trolley Museum in Washington, Pa., and the Internet with providing images he used in his book.

Worley, with his interest in the wheels of Pittsburgh's past, published three other history books: "Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway," "Pittsburgh's Vintage Firemen" and "Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway."

He is working on "West Side Belt Railroad" that ought to be out by the spring of 2006, he said.

Worley publishes his own history books and works in close association with Mechling Bookbindery in Chicora. "They are my printing partner," he said.

To buy a copy of "Pittsburgh Inclines and Street Railways," write to Howard Worley at P.O. Box 445, Saxonburg, PA 16056.

The book costs $25.95 plus $3.85 for shipping. He'll also autograph or personalize the book.