Rail bikes

Factual Questions
1

I’ve imagined an outrigger type device that would allow me to ride my bike on un-used railroad tracks. It turns out such things exists but it looks like they are mostly (all?) DIY contraptions. The design process, with much trial and error, that you can see on YouTube is pretty impressive. There are pedal powered four wheel designs that two or more people can ride and there are commercial tour companies that use them. I think I’d like the more upright “normal” bike configuration Is there a “perfected” version out there? I know, railroads are dangerous places but there have to be many miles of abandoned track. Any Dopers doing this?

BTW, why can’t Iink Youtube vids anymore?

2

You can still, it’s just a bit tricky:

  1. Right-click on video in YouTube and choose “copy video URL”
  2. Paste video URL in post with a / after it.
  3. Quickly hit post before video appears in preview pane.

After you post a video in this way you can’t go back in and edit your post.

You could also just make a descriptive text link to the video. I do that a lot so I have the option to go back in and edit if i want.

3

Ordinary bikes depend for their stability on slight steering back and forth. Restrained to a single rail, an ordinary bike would fall over almost immediately.

Which means you’d need some other source of stability, something like training wheels (pun retroactively intended). But then, your training wheels are either rolling along the much less even ties and gravel on either side of the rail, or spanning all the way across to the other rail.

4

Then there’s the safety and legality of being on train tracks. The OP speaks of “unused railroad tracks,” but how sure are you that they are truly decommissioned tracks that no train will ever be on? They might seem unused but could technically still be considered active. And railroads and law enforcement take trespassing on railroad lines very seriously.

Even if the line you are talking about is truly inactive, who owns that property? Do you have permission to be there? Would you be trespassing?

If you want to travel along train tracks at a leisurely pace, safely and legally, you might look into the hobby of rail cars (not to be confused with privately owned railroad cars).

Railroad motorcars or ‘Speeders’ were used by the railroads to inspect the many miles of track for defects and to handle track maintenance.

North American Railcar Operators Association – ‘NARCOA’ - is a non-profit group dedicated to the preservation and the safe, legal operation of railroad equipment historically used for maintenance of way. The key phrase in this description is “safe, legal operation”. NARCOA members operate their own privately owned railroad motorcars on railroads throughout the United States and Canada during railroad-sanctioned NARCOA excursions. Members travel through some of the most picturesque areas of the North American continent. Excursions vary from one-day, 25 mile trips between two towns to multi-day, 1000 mile trips covering several states or provinces! These excursions are organized by NARCOA Excursion Coordinators. All excursions are approved by and coordinated with participating railroads.

I had a friend who was into this many years ago. Unfortunately, I was never able to join him on an excursion, but the clubs seem open to people who would like to try it out and join someone who has an open seat. IOW, you don’t have to get your own rail car to try it out. And if you end up getting hooked, it’s not tremendously expensive.

Running a speeder costs considerably less than boating or golfing although some think it’s a hot, noisy and smelly hobby! Some members also own and operate more modern Hy-Rail vehicles [standard road vehicles with retractable guide wheels that can operate on road or rail].

However, more to the point of the OP, while looking for the links above, I found this:

What is a Rail Explorer?
A rail explorer is a pedal powered vehicle that rides on railroad tracks. They have 4 steel wheels, hydraulic disc brakes, pedals for each seat, and are comfortable, fun and easy to ride. Although the rail explorers require pedalling, the magic of steel wheels on steel rails makes the experience very different from riding a regular bicycle. There is no need to carefully watch the road ahead, there is no need to steer and riding is hands free - making it easy to take photographs and video as you roll along. Choose either the Tandem Rail Explorer (2 seats) or Quad Rail Explorer (4 seats) for your ride.
…
Rail Explorers only operates on rails with the permission of the railroad. Our staff co-ordinate closely with the railroad managers and dispatchers to ensure that there are no other vehicles on the rails during our operations. Active railroads are extremely dangerous and unauthorised access is strictly forbidden.

They operate in Amador, CA; Boone, IA; Lexington, KY; Cooperstown, NY; Phoenicia, NY; and Newport, RI.

My wife and I are considering doing this with our grandkids next spring!

5

You can also go with companies like Revolution Rail which has operations in a few states on unused or very lightly used RR lines. Their bikes are custom made (2 person or 4 person) and quite fun to ride.

6

There’s lot of versions of bikes that ride on one rail with an outrigger on the other. I couldn’t tell you if any of them are “perfected” but they do exist.

One of the youtubers I watch put out a video recently covering exactly this. At least I thought it was someone I watch, but I can’t find it at the moment. Seems like something Tom Scott would have done.
In the mean time, here’s a picture of an upright/outrigger style bike.

7

You can ride through the redwoods on the Skunk Train Railbikes

8

Railroad tracks actually require seasonal maintenance and will become misaligned after several winter seasons of neglect. Generally speaking, rail line owners will actually pull up the rails on actually unused lines and railheads because the rails can be reused or recycled, and there has been a trend of repurposing old railroad right-of-way to bike and walking paths because donating the land makes a nice writeoff for rail line owners who aren’t getting any use out of the line and generally can’t sell it for residential or other commercial use. So I doubt the o.p. is actually going to find long stretches of “truly decommissioned tracks that no train will ever be on,” and as you note trespassing even on unused branch lines and spurs is taken seriously because of the liability.

Stranger

9

Thanks. I thought of adding something along those lines, but my post was already a bit longish.

10

Old Joke - “Of course the train is still running, see, it’s leaving tracks.”

11

Sometimes, but I’ve seen a heck of a lot of stretches of rail that are still in place despite not having been used in decades. As to how you can tell that it’s truly unused? The rust is a big giveaway. So are the saplings growing up between the rails.

12

Which will tend to slow down the bike trip a bit.

13

Strange that the photo crops off some critical elements, such as what’s clamped to the front wheel hub. The outrigger won’t prevent that guy from falling over to his right, even if it will keep him from falling to the left. Still, nothing we can see prevents him from steering the bike slightly and falling off the rail either. I suspect the contraption(s) attached to the front wheel hub and handlebars clamp to the side of the rail’s top flange, whether with additional wheels or guides, to prevent lateral movement.

14

Here’s a video. .Electric version and pretty cool.

15

I’m not sure what’s mounted in front of the bike, but other examples I’ve seen also have some type of wheel out there. My WAG is that it’s something to help with steering. Maybe it’s what keeps the bike on the track.
As far as falling the other way, a small weight on the outrigger would counter that. Plus, I’m guessing you quickly learn to keep your weight to the left/inside so you don’t fall the other way.

16

Yeah, you don’t want to add weight to a bike unnecessarily, but that’s a pretty long lever arm, so it wouldn’t take much. I wouldn’t be surprised if the weight of the spars holding the outrigger wheel themselves would be enough.

And I really hope that the shocks on that bike in the video @MikeF linked are lockable, because you don’t want any shock absorption at all on a surface as smooth as a rail.

17

Given that some abandoned rail lines are the old 50’ lengths of bolted-together rail and not well-aligned due to non-maintenance since ???, I’m going to bet a little suspension would be helpful. But not much. Heck, a springy padded seat may be sufficient.

I agree the BMX-style high compliance long-throw suspension on the bike in that vid seems like gross overkill for the mission. Unless you expect to ride the BMX bike cross country to get from your car to the rails, whereat you attach the rest of the rail rig that was in your backpack. Or that folded up mostly out of the way for conventional bike riding. Which mechanism I sort of see there.


With any rail bike one issue I see is that unless the saddle is very low-set, the rider may have a real problem putting their feet down to stabilize the bike when stopped. The rail head is 5-7" above the top of the ties and maybe an inch more above the (now ratty) ballast between the ties. Ideally the bike can’t tip over on its own, even while the rider is mounting or dismounting. But I bet that’s not quite as true as we might hope. So IMO being able to dabble one’s feet on the ground while seated would be very useful.

18

Actually, I know of several stretches of unused railroad track even here in Massachusetts. They’re slowly disappearing as people finally start pulling up the tracks and turning these into paved rail trails, but there are still some out there.

The biggest headache with unused tracks isn’t misalignment, but the trees and bushes that have grown up through and around the tracks, making progress impossible unless you go through and hack them out yourself.

By the way, Pepper Mill and I took a spin on rail bikes on some unused tracks here is Massachusetts just over a year ago. The devices were, indeed, home-built by the people running it. I would’ve redesigned them slightly for better leverage, but even the non-biking Pepper Mill had fun on it.

19

How about the old-fashioned, human-powered handcar? Are they used anywhere - either for business or pleasure? Handcar - Wikipedia

20

Yeah, I was wondering that. Quick google: answer is, seemingly so. The Experience – Monterey Bay Rail Bikes

Not sure these are the silent movie variety handcars, though.

j