The massive wheels, gears and cables of the Duquesne Heights Incline keep it moving up and down Mount Washington, but its real power source is two octogenarians who have kept the incline on track for more than 40 years.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette David and Ruth Miller, who 40 years ago founded the Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Heights Incline, stand on the public viewing area overlooking Downtown. Click photo for larger image.

David and Ruth Miller launched a neighborhood initiative in Mount Washington to raise $19,000 to repair the incline after it was shut down by its private owner in 1963.

It was the Millers who, in 1964, spearheaded formation of a nonprofit organization, the Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Heights Incline, to operate the incline when no one else wanted to.

And it is the Millers who envisioned an interior platform -- opened last week -- that would take visitors into the bowels of the incline, where they could study its finely tuned mechanical processes.

"David has wanted this almost since the first year," Ruth Miller said at last week's ribbon cutting for the new platform.

"When he saw this wonderful equipment, it broke his heart that he couldn't bring people in to see it. The steps were so steep that we couldn't bring people down here. Now we have gentle steps and a handicapped elevator."

Now 83 and 84, respectively, David and Ruth moved from Grandview Avenue three years ago to Friendship Village, a retirement community in Upper St. Clair. But the Millers are still going strong at the incline, overseeing operations of one of Pittsburgh's best-loved tourist attractions, and they're already getting ready for their next project.

Thursday night, the same day they cut the ribbon at their new interior platform, the Millers received a package from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Ruth didn't open it right away because she thought it was a blouse she had ordered from a catalog company. When she did, she found a letter announcing that the National Park Service has approved a $199,000 grant to renovate the lower station of the incline.

"What a surprise," she said, as she turned the half-inch book of government regulations over to her husband.

Visitors who want to look at the incline's mechanics from the new platform will pay an extra fee of 50 cents. If they are lucky, they may even get a personal tour led by David Miller, a retired engineer who spent 42 years at Jones & Laughlin Steel and LTV Steel Corp., retiring in 1985 as director of environmental control.

With his engineer's mind, Miller understands the kind of heavy equipment that runs the incline, knows its history and how it has operated so steadfastly for 127 years.

"It is fail-safe. If the electricity fails, boom, it stops," said Miller, adding that there has never been a serious accident on the incline involving the machinery.

For the Millers, "this incline is like their children," said Margaret Sommerer, of Mount Washington, a retired nurse who works in the incline gift shop, a work environment where she said everyone is "treated like family."

The Millers both grew up above the incline, Ruth in Duquesne Heights and David in Mount Washington. They remember the days when there were no buses in Mount Washington, long known as Coal Mountain, and three inclines operated -- Duquesne Heights, the Monongahela Incline and the Castle Shannon Incline, which hauled coal and closed in 1964.

"We remember a lot. It is strange to be the oldest ones and to remember things," said Ruth. "We remember when the incline was a nickel a ride." It now costs $1.75 each way.

Although they traveled parallel paths through South Hills High School and the Carnegie Institute of Technology, from which both graduated in 1942, the Millers didn't become a couple until David returned home from the Navy after World War II.

They married in 1945 and set up housekeeping a few blocks from the Duquesne Heights Incline.

In 1962, the Duquesne Inclined Plane Co. shut down the incline because the cables had worn grooves in the sheaves -- the giant wheels -- and the company didn't want to make the costly repair.

Then neighbors started hearing that someone wanted to put a glass restaurant on the site.

"The neighborhood erupted," Ruth Miller said. "The neighbors didn't even know the owners. It was simply our incline."

With the Millers at the helm, the neighbors raised $19,000 in six months through raffles, card parties, bake sales and donations to buy the new sheaves.

On July 1, 1963, the incline reopened. Shortly after that, it was purchased by the Port Authority, which agreed to lease it back to the preservation society for $1 a year.

Since then, the Millers and the preservation society have run the incline through good times and bad and, until recently, without much help from government.

David Miller said the $600,000 in federal and state money used to build the platform was the first government grant funding awarded to the incline, which relies entirely on fares, membership fees, donations and gift shop sales. The upper deck that was built in 1987 was paid for with money from foundations and charitable organizations.

Now, with the National Park Service grant, the Millers have even more reason to be optimistic about the future of the incline.

"It is a better operation than it ever was and we are going to make it better yet," said David Miller. Asked if he has any plans to retire, he said "no," not until he "gets good and sick."

"When he gets good and old, he will retire," said his wife.