In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the advent of rail
transportation made Americans much more mobile. They were able
to move away from home towns, visit friends and relatives in
distant places, commute from one town to another for work, and
travel around the country just for fun. Funicular (or "incline")
railways were a special form of rail travel that allowed people
to easily ascend mountainsides and enjoy the views from the
heights. A funicular is a hybrid between a train and an
elevator, used to carry passengers and freight up and down
hillsides. Like a train, it has cars that run on rails. Like an
elevator, it uses a cable to pull the cars up the hill. A
funicular has a pair of cars that run in opposite directions, so
the one going down helps pull the one going up. funiculars as
well as other forms of rail transportation were displaced by
cars, buses, and trucks. While a few funiculars remain in
service in the United States, most were gone by about 1930. a
brief period between 1912 and about 1920,