David H. Miller was almost certainly the person most responsible for getting Monday Night Football telecasts to cut away from old steel mill footage to live images of the Duquesne Heights Incline's graceful climb up and down Mount Washington.

In July 1963, Mr. Miller, an engineer, and his wife, Ruth, a money management wizard, led the campaign to revive the Duquesne Incline after years of wear had forced its closure seven months earlier.

During the ensuing decades, the Millers and other members of the nonprofit Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Heights Incline made it among the most reliable conveyances in the city.

"We don't have breakdowns," Mrs. Miller said definitively. "I mean that. Our fellows watch that like a hawk."

For all those years, they kept the incline running with a network of volunteers, the support of 200 members throughout the United States and a core of about 30 paid operators and workers who do maintenance and repairs in the middle of the night so they won't inconvenience commuters.

The Port Authority still owns the incline, but leases it to the society for $1 per year.

"That was Dave and Ruth's incline, there was no question about it," said Jim Presken, current chief operating officer of the society. "If it wasn't for them, trust me, there would be no incline."

Mr. Miller, who had been in poor health since last fall, died Saturday at age 87. The couple had moved from Mount Washington to an Upper St. Clair retirement community in 2001.

While the Duquesne Incline doesn't see the traffic of its cousin that connects Mount Washington and Station Square, it still makes 1,000 weekday trips and up to 2,500 trips on weekends, running from 5:30 a.m. until 12:45 the next day.

The passengers are mostly tourists now, enjoying the view as they ride up to one of the Mount Washington restaurants, but Mrs. Miller said the incline played a vital role in 1963. At the time, only one trolley serviced the neighborhood and people needed a quicker way into town, she said. Missing the trolley meant a long walk to the Monongahela Incline.

To bring back their incline, the Millers and others went door to door and collected $20,000 in those seven months, an enormous sum at the time.

Mr. Miller, who spent 40 years as an engineer for Jones & Laughlin before his retirement in 1985, made the incline his other life's work. It may have started as a commuter project, but once the incline's workings and history came into sharp focus, "we realized we had something pretty special on our hands," Mrs. Miller said.

Unlike the three-tiered cars on the Mon Incline, the Duquesne Incline cars have one level, with seven side windows and three end windows to look out on the river and city. The $2 fare embarrasses Mrs. Miller, who remembers when it cost a nickel, even though people tell her what a bargain it is.

Monitoring the incline's operation was part of the Millers' daily routine. Every morning, Mr. Miller talked to the operator about how things were going. When they vacationed in Scotland, "it was nothing for us to get a telephone call asking something" about the incline, Mrs. Miller recalled.

"We learned to call them."

Mrs. Miller and Mr. Presken say the incline, which began operating in 1877, is on solid financial footing now, a lasting tribute to the Millers' passion and commitment to preserving part of Pittsburgh's heritage.

Funeral arrangements for Mr. Miller are being handled by Brusco-Falvo Funeral Home, Inc., 214 Virginia Ave., Mount Washington. Visitation will be held at the funeral home from 2 to 9 p.m. today and tomorrow. A private graveside service is planned for 11 a.m. Thursday in Mt. Lebanon Cemetery.