Introduction to the Railbike Blog
Welcome and thank you for visiting the Railbike Blog, a place that I intend to develop as the premier resource for railbiking in North America. Over the coming months, not only will I write reviews of each of the excursions currently on offer, Iāll also explore the people, politics and technology that have shaped modern railbiking.Ā
What is railbiking? While I offer a more specific definition below, it is exactly as it sounds: pedal-powered vehicles used on railroad tracks.
In the past two years, Iāve pedalled 8 routes and count another 8 across the continent to pedal this year. Please let me know if there are any excursions Iāve missed and should add. Also, if anyone knows of a legal opportunity to ride a bicycle fit with an outrigger for rail travel (photo above right), please let me know. Here is the list of North American routes to the best of my knowledge.
Rail Explorers Rhode Island Division: The Northern Ramble and the Southern Circuit
Rail Explorers Las Vegas Division: The Southwest Ramble
Rail Explorers Catskills Division (NY): The River Run
Rail Explorers Adirondack Division (NY): Saranac Lake to Lake Clear andĀ āInto the Wildā from Tupper Lake to Lake Clear (neither currently on offer)
Rail Explorers Delaware Division: Brandywine Valley (not currently on offer)
Revolution Rail Co: North Creek, NY
Railriders (WA): North Pend Oreille Valley Lions ClubĀ
Railriders Joseph BranchĀ (OR): Joseph to Enterprise and Minam to Wallowa
Oregon Coast RailridersĀ (OR): Bay City to Tillamook and Wheeler
Vance Creek Railriders (WA): Camp 1 to Shelton
Adirondack Scenic RailbikeĀ AdventuresĀ (NY): Round trip Thendara to Carter Station
Belfast and Moosehead Lake RailCyclers (ME)
Please read below for my working definition of modern railbikes, along with a brief history of the concept. In coming posts, Iāll offer more detail on how the current vehicles and routes came to be. I look forward to sharing this with you.
For the purposes of this blog, a Railbike is a non-motorized, pedal-powered rail vehicle used for inspection and maintenance-of-way or for recreation on railroad lines. Railbikes are distinguished from motorized draisines in that they are pedal-powered in the manner of bicycles. For the same reason, they are further distinguished fromĀ handcars, velocipede handcars, and hand-powered draisinesĀ (NB, European systems tend not to use this distinction and use the generic term draisine universally). While initially used for track inspection and light transport of rail materials, typical modern examples are for recreational tourist excursions. Most modern railbikes run on disused railroads or on shared track with tourist railroads, although this does not preclude railbikes from operating on purpose-built tracks.
(The author on a Rail Explorers tandem railbike during theĀ āInto the Wildā excursion in October of 2016, Tupper Lake - Lake Clear, Adirondacks, NY)
Unsurprisingly, the evolution of the railbike is tied closely to the evolution of both the railroad and the bicycle. Given the need for a lightweight rail inspection vehicle, light enough to be easily removed from tracks to clear the way for oncoming trains or to reverse direction of travel, the inventors Perry and Aspinwall patented the original three-wheeled velocipede hand-car, which was later improved and mass-produced by the George S. Sheffield Company of Three Rivers, Michigan, US in 1883Ā [1]Ā [2].
(Advert for Geo S. Sheffield's early three-wheeled handcar, 1883Ā [4])
Following the introduction of the chain-driven bicycle in the late 1860s, which was mass-produced starting in 1885 by British inventor John Kemp Starley as the Rover Safety Bicycle, Charles N. Teetor of Hagerstown, Indiana, US, patented a four-wheeled pedal-powered railbike called the Railway Velocipede, one of the earliest examples of a pedal-powered railway vehicleĀ [3]. A side-by-side tandem version with passenger seating was produced by Orenstein & Koppel of Berlin, GermanyĀ six years earlierĀ [4].
(Sketch of Teetor's pedal-powered, chain-driven Railway Velocipede from the original 1895 patentĀ [3])
(Orenstein & Koppel side-by-side tandem with passenger seating, c.1890Ā [4])
Following Dunlop's 1887 invention of the pneumatic bicycle tyre and subsequent mounting improvements by Michelin in 1891, the Sears and Roebucks Catalog offered the "Harris 20th Century Railroad Attachment" in 1908. The catalog described the attachment as transforming "the ordinary bicycle into the most practical and durable device obtaining high speed on railroad tracks, making a regular railroad velocipede out of an ordinary bicycle...this attachment has become very popular with railroad and telegraph employees, both male and female"Ā [1]Ā [4]
(Harris 20th Century Railroad Attachment as seen in the Sears and Roebuck catalog, 1905Ā [1])
Abandonment Creates Room for Recreational Railbikes
The 20th-century trend toward the use of private automobiles, buses and airplanes decreased the use of trains in many countriesĀ [5]. Large-scale abandonment of railroads followed the Beeching cuts in the UK in 1963 and the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act in the US 1976, the latter leaving almost 35,000 miles (56,000 km) of disused trackĀ [1]. By the mid-1970s, the magazine Popular Mechanics advertised conversion kits for using standard bicycles on abandoned railroads available from the American Railbike AssociationĀ [6]. Thus, the abandoned railroads created a space for a new form of leisure.
(Advert for conversion kit, Popular Mechanics,Ā February, 1976)
Melin, B., Railbike: Cycling on Abandoned Railroads, Balboa Publishing, San Anselmo, CA, 1996
US Patent RE10303 E, Handcar, https://www.google.com/patents/USRE10303
US Patent 569683 A, Railway Velocipede, https://patents.google.com/patent/US569683A/
Thomas, J., Historic Builders of Velocipedes and Other Hand Powered Vehicles, http://velocipedes.blazerweb.co.uk/newsletters/Newsletter19b.pdf
Gallamore, Robert E. and Meyer, John R., American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, Harvard University Press, 2014
Popular Mechanics, It's New Now: Riding the Rails-Bicycle Style, February, 1976, p 87, https://books.google.com/books?id=B-IDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false