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, I’ll also explore the people, politics and technology that have shaped modern railbiking. 

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, I’ve pedalled 8 routes and count another 8 across the continent to pedal this year. Please let me know if there are any excursions I’ve 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.

Previously Pedalled:

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 and “Into the Wild” 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

Planned to Pedal:

Railriders (WA): North Pend Oreille Valley Lions Club 

Railriders Joseph Branch (OR): Joseph to Enterprise and Minam to Wallowa

Oregon Coast Railriders (OR): Bay City to Tillamook and Wheeler

Vance Creek Railriders (WA): Camp 1 to Shelton

Adirondack Scenic Railbike Adventures (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, I’ll offer more detail on how the current vehicles and routes came to be. I look forward to sharing this with you.

Definition

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 from handcars, velocipede handcars, and hand-powered draisines (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 the “Into the Wild” excursion in October of 2016, Tupper Lake - Lake Clear, Adirondacks, NY)

A Brief History

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 1883 [1] [2].

(Advert for Geo S. Sheffield's early three-wheeled handcar, 1883 [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 vehicle [3]. A side-by-side tandem version with passenger seating was produced by Orenstein & Koppel of Berlin, Germany six years earlier [4].

(Sketch of Teetor's pedal-powered, chain-driven Railway Velocipede from the original 1895 patent [3])

(Orenstein & Koppel side-by-side tandem with passenger seating, c.1890 [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" [1] [4]

(Harris 20th Century Railroad Attachment as seen in the Sears and Roebuck catalog, 1905 [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 countries [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 track [1]. By the mid-1970s, the magazine Popular Mechanics advertised conversion kits for using standard bicycles on abandoned railroads available from the American Railbike Association [6]. Thus, the abandoned railroads created a space for a new form of leisure.

(Advert for conversion kit, Popular Mechanics,  February, 1976)

References

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

Founded in 2017 by former Rail Explorers employee Rob Harte and partner Mike Dupee, Revolution Rail Co. runs along the Adirondack Railway north of the quaint, ski hamlet of North Creek, NY, at one point crossing the Hudson River where it is as small as a mountain creek. I pedalled this route in August of 2018. While operations are currently closed for the winter, they resume on May 11th.

The Site

Check-in is at the North Creek Station, which until recently was the northern terminus for the Saratoga and North Creek Railway and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. While the tourist train from Saratoga Springs ceased operations last year and left the future of the entire line in question, the train and a few historic coaches and locomotives were still on site. The station, well-placed in an Adirondack hamlet, is a simple structure that feels like a cozy barn inside. A smaller, adjacent building houses the North Creek Depot Museum.

The Route

After a short drive north of the station in a former school bus, the railbikes were waiting on the tracks by a small turnoff. On the six-mile (9.7 km) round-trip ride, the tracks run along and over the Hudson River and then briefly along the Boreas River, all under the Adirondack forest canopy. The highlight of the trip is the trestle over the Hudson.

At the far point of the route, the riders leave the railbikes and walk down to the banks of the Boreas River while the bikes are turned around for the return trip. A small, bespoke turntable on the tracks is used, as seen in the photo and RevRail Instagram post below.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Revolution Rail (@revrailco) on Aug 18, 2017 at 6:44pm PDT

The Vehicles

According to our guide, the vehicles were entirely designed by the founders. The frames are made of tubular and plate aluminum bolted together. The drivetrain, wheels and some other components appear to be supplied by Railriders.

It’s worth noting here that the ride was delayed because of an intense thunder and lightening storm and the tracks were sopping wet when we rode them. The braking felt secure, although I had no need (opportunity?) to test hard-braking of polyurethane wheels on wet rail.

Travel Notes

Initially a logging camp, the hamlet of North Creek grew from the tanning and raw garnet mining in the area. By the 1930s, The North Creek Ski Bowl had been established and by the 1960s New York State opened the Gore Mountain ski resort, making both Alpine and Nordic skiing the main draws of the hamlet.

In 2014, I travelled to North Creek for a weekend of Nordic skiing. At that time, It was still possible to travel all the way by train by taking Amtrak to Saratoga Springs and transferring to the the (sadly now defunct) Saratoga and North Creek Railway, which, in my case, required a fun night out in hopping Saratoga Springs before boarding the morning train to North Creek. The trains offered elegant, white-linen table service in big, comfy seats and served local fare prepared onboard. Because the tourist train has stopped running indefinitely, I opted to visit Revolution Rail Co. by rental car from the Amtrak station in hard drinking Schenectady, NY.

For those who stay in North Creek, there is a small but high-quality selection of bars, restaurants and cafes on Main Street. The Gore Mountain gondola lift is a great attraction, both in that many of the former gondolas are on display in and around North Creek, and in that the lift itself is open year round for skiing, hiking, Autumn leaf-peeping and mountain biking.