Taking blue collar to new heights
Duquesne Incline picture presents peak Pittsburgh grit
In mid-June, in the dead of night, Mike Sisul snapped a photo of his co-workers — strapped to a railroad hundreds of feet above the confluence of Pittsburgh’s rivers.
They were doing yearly maintenance on the Duquesne Incline railroad ties. Yet to Mr. Sisul and everyone he shared it with, the photo meant something more: a heroic dose of blue-collar, Pittsburgher grit.
Mr. Sisul, 46, and Greg Nagg, 47, work for J. Poli, a South Side-based general contractor. It’s the same company that revamped the incline’s observation deck last winter.
Mr. Nagg joined the company four years ago, and Mr. Sisul has worked for J. Poli for half his life. Both are Pittsburgh-born and raised, with lifelong affinities for handiwork.
“I was tearing off shingles when I was 13, 14 years old,” Mr. Nagg said. “I never had play toys, just used power tools with my dad.”
Mr. Nagg is the star of the shot, pictured lifting one of the ties out of place. His wife, Emily, shared the photo to her Facebook to a warm response. “It’s so down to earth, so Pittsburgh,” Mr. Nagg said.
Mr. Sisul showed it to one of his neighbors, who quickly requested it and posted it to his feed where it “went viral.”
The two men and a few other team members worked five shifts two weeks ago from 10 p.m to 6 a.m. to replace some of the incline’s rail ties.
The two tracks are about 800 feet long on a 30-degree incline. With about 800 ties in total, maintenance aims to replace around 10% of them each year.
Mr. Sisul said the team replaced about 30 ties over the course of three nights. The other two nights, they cut back the car’s cable because it tends to stretch over time and did a full track inspection, identifying other older ties and checking over their work.
A “bad tie” means one where the wood is split a bit, maybe has some rot around the edges. Mr. Sisul said tie replacement is a bit of a “redundant” process because most of the load is applied right on the rails. This maintenance is for maximum precaution.
Still, it’s a grueling, tedious process. The team hitches onto the bottom of a cart and ascends up the incline to the closest ties, flanked by shadowy trees and backlit by the glow of the city.
“It’s a little frightful,” Mr. Sisul said. “One nice thing is that it’s dark, so you really don’t see what’s underneath you as much.”
First, they strap themselves to the rail to avoid any tumbles down the mountainside. Once they unbolt a tie from the steel of the rail, one worker captures the near200-pound tie with a sling while the other cuts it in half.
“It wants to fall, so it’s trying to yank your elbow out of your sockets. Then you pull it up like you’re fishing,” Mr. Sisul said.
They load the old tie into a compartment underneath the car. Then, they drag out the replacement and slide it into place, wedging up each end of the rail so the wood can fit. Once the new ties are in, they spike the rail down, check their work, load their tools and start over.
Every tie takes at least 20 minutes to complete. They can only bring four to five ties up at a time before descending for another batch.
So what’s harder, fighting the incline or lifting out the hefty wooden ties?
“All of the above,” Mr. Sisul said. “It’s brutal, just brutal.”
“The ties are not light. It’s a lot of muscle work, also keeping yourself secure. It’s kind of a slow process, but you have to be safe about it,” Mr. Nagg said.
Because the incline is part of the region’s transportation system, it has stayed open every day during the pandemic — 5:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. from Monday-Saturday, opening 7 a.m. on Sundays and holidays. It’s part of what’s helped J. Poli stay in business; most of its clients are essential.
Mark McNally, executive manager of the Duquesne Incline, said ridership has been “terrible” during the pandemic.
“There’s not any conventions, no tour buses coming in, no arts festival, school buses, supposedly no Fourth of July fireworks,” he said. “I don’t see it getting better any time soon.”
The incline has been open to the public since 1877 and runs entirely on collected fares, donations, membership fees and gift shop sales.
Doing work on the incline has made Mr. Sisul appreciate his hometown’s history. He recalls how the incline has some of the United States’ oldest pieces of equipment still in service, operating with the original steel-cast wooden gears that have hoisted the cars for over 140 years.
He loves pictures from the ‘50s and ‘60s — the peak of the steel mills — when smog made “Downtown Pittsburgh at 1 p.m. look like it was midnight.”
“I never realized there’s a lot of stuff there that’s more than just taking a little ride. You can definitely see a lot of history. It’s really cool,” he said.
“It’s a little frightful. One nice thing is that it’s dark, so you really don’t see what’s underneath you as much.”
— Mike Sisul