rail bike

Rail bike? Like a bike that goes on train tracks? -- Yes, said Phranque, a bike that rides on train tracks. This one's going to be two bikes, side by side. -- How do they stay on? -- There are guide wheels, and the steering is locked. -- How will it go around curves if the steering is locked? -- The curves are wide, they have to be, a train can't take much of  curve. And there's enough play between the bike wheels and the guide wheels to make it. Trains can't take much of a grade either. So it'll be pretty flat all the way out to the coast.

And it was. Though we didn't make it to the coast; the bike was nearly dead by the time we hit Veneta.

 

You may be wondering what about the trains? Fortunately, we had the advantage of train-less track. There was (at the time) a decommissioned line from Eugene to the coast, meaning the track was maintained, but not utilized- perfect.  A totally abandoned line seems like it may be best, but its not. Depending on how long its been abandoned it may have a bunch of things growing in it, trees fallen onto it, it may be damaged or dismantled. One of things that's seemingly counter intuitive about rail lines is that repeated use keeps them in good shape, rail lines that don't have trains running over them will twist and pull apart over time. It makes sense when you think about it, the train is constantly ironing the tracks flat.

I had never heard of a rail bike until i came to Eugene. Its an awesome idea- ride a bike on your own personal highway through the wilderness- no traffic, no developments, no one else around. Even better, you don't have to steer, the track guides you entirely. Not having to steer (or balance) is an incredible freedom- you can look all around you, you can even have your eyes shut, or like we did on our ride, you can ride backwards.

Rail bikes aren't a new idea, it actually goes back to the 1800's, though they were called railway velocipedes, or track velocipedes back then. Depending on the actuation style, it could also have been called a hand car, a pump trolley, a pump car, a jigger, or a Kalamazoo!

 

While looking into the history of the railway velocipede I had the good fortune to come across The National Velocipede Rally, a British organization that holds annual rallies of human-powered rail vehicles in the UK. A brief history of the railway velocipede from their site:

[The Railway Velocipede] was invented by George Sheffield to get to work by unofficially riding on the tracks of the Michigan Central Railway in the hours of darkness. One evening he found a broken rail and by borrowing a lantern from a local farm, he stopped an approaching train and prevented a derailment and loss of life. News of his nocturnal velocipeding was out but the railway company was grateful for his prompt action and allowed his use of their tracks, also asking him to build another velocipede for the Michigan Central.

His patent was issued on 11 March 1879 and according to the Scientific American of 3 November 1883, 4000 of these machines had been sold in America and Europe in just 4 years, a world-wide hit. They were used as personal transport for track inspectors and signal engineers and could carry two people if needed. Their light weight meant they could easily be removed from the track when required...   Kevin Thomas

Jacqui Thomas, organizer of The National Velocipede Rally, was kind enough to be interviewed for this post:

Jaqcui, tell me a little about your organization. 

[We're] the biggest and oldest one in the UK, over a dozen machines attend at the Churnet Valley Railway. Only a Sunday Rally, but I  hope to make it weekend Rally  in 2014. Other Rallies are appearing, The North Yorkshire Moors Railway in November but not organised by me. Hopefully one in 2013 at the Langollen Railway in Wales again not organised by me.
  
On average, how many people attend your rallies?

We send out about 100 Newsletters and about 30 attend the National Rally, families of those bringing machines, those building and restoring, and Railway Photographers.

How did you come to be involved in this work?

My father was a shedmaster on a sugar cane railway in Zululand, South Africa when I was a child in the 50's and I noticed the dumped hand power machines that had been replaced by petol machines. I kept noticing and the interest grew. I built a Velocipede from photos and measurements collected in Santa Clara Railway Museum, California before I came across Steve Kay who started the UK Rallies. Also a pump trolly which I cut down from standard gauge bits. I did train as an engineer but never did it as a job, I worked in the technical/studio side of publishing.

I also try to track down all the preserved machines and send them the Newsletter in the hope they will come along. I'm also writing a book on the subject, and help any one who wants  information on restoration or new builds. I also get hand powered queries passed onto me by the National Railway Museum. It's my retirement hobby.

...

For more information about The National Velocipede Rally, documentation of some fascinating human-powered rail vehicles, and even downloadable schematic files (to build your own!)  visit: http://www.velocipedes.co.uk/


Returning to our side of the pond:

The building of this particular rail bike was envisioned and enacted by Phranque, former pastor of the Bike Church. I helped out with the construction some, but it was mostly Phranque who built it, with help from a couple others in the shop. It sat there finished, just waiting for someone to ride it, but for weeks no one did. I finally asked Phranque if i could take it out for a ride and he was happy to have someone take it on its maiden voyage. I told my buddy Kyle about it, and he was pumped. (I knew Kyle would be into it).

The trip started off only a few blocks from the church, we walked it down to the tracks. Honestly, we were both a little paranoid that "someone" might see us and consider our trip, for lack of a more euphemistic term, illegal. But it was sunday, the trains weren't running, and apparently neither were the cops. Giddy with adrenaline and the thrill of doing something we knew we weren't supposed to, we sped away from the road as fast as we could. 

We didn't get too far before we noticed that we were missing one of the nuts on the front of the bike, specifically, one of two holding on the front right wheel (as well, holding the right side of the front guiding structure). We stopped and looked around, but to no avail. The bike seemed to do fine so we kept going.Within another 10 minutes we'd lost another. After that we tried to keep our eyes on the nuts, stopping every so often to re-tighten them, but even so we lost the third before we'd gone an hour. We did the majority of the trip with the right fork missing both nuts for the wheel, and the left fork with only one. The pressure of our weight was the only thing keeping it all together. Several times throughout the trip we needed to lift up the bike to switch tracks and each time the whole front end would just fall off. By the end of the day it was something of a cruel Sisyphean joke.

The first leg of our trip was through the industrial section of Eugene. It was interesting seeing the backsides of industry, the undersides of highways, and secret hobo camping grounds. The line we were on wasn't, even while in operation, a commuter line- we were seeing things very few ever got to.

Though what we mostly encountered were long stretches of beautiful country side and woods.

On our way out of the city was my favorite moment of the whole trip. I wish SO much that I had it on video, but it was one of those things that you don't stop to take video of:

As we were leaving the industrial section and heading, more or less, straight into the woods we encountered our first road crossing. We saw it coming and slowed down to strategize- okay, so pull up slowly staying out of sight, then i'll get off and walk up to the road, once we have the all clear, you pedal like crazy, i'll run along side and jump on the bike-- It sounded like a good plan, or at least our best option. What actually happened was very different.

As we approached the road the warning bells and blinking lights went off and then the motorized arms dropped. Shit, a train! We looked behind us and there was nothing. In front of us, nothing. Didn't hear anything, the tracks weren't rumbling... it was us, we set it off.  At this point the cars were starting to pile up: four, seven, twelve.... Fuck. What do we do? Lets just wait, maybe the arms will go back up. No, said Kyle, we have to go to the other side. Why do we have to go to the other side? The arms are going to stay down until we cross. We just need to go for it. Go for it? Yeah, really fast.

We sped across the tracks as fast as we could (which was not very fast) laughing and screaming the whole time. The looks on the faces of the drivers was priceless.

We booked it as hard as we could for as long as we could. Once we'd gone a ways, we turned to see if the road was re-opened and it was.

It was pretty much smooth sailing from there on out, well, it was smooth in respect to run-ins with people in cars. Just about everything else was not smooth, namely using the rail bike. Two steel frames, with a lot of excess metal supports, plus our gear was already heavy enough. But what really slowed us down were the guides keeping us on the tracks- four flanged metal wheels both riding on the tracks and running down alongside them. The drag from the friction of the guide wheels was huge, it was like having the brakes on the whole time. So while everything stayed really flat, it felt like we were pedaling up hill the entire way. Plus it was absurdly loud, we were two feet apart but had to shout to be able to hear each other. The roughest part, however, were all of the crashes.

Our first crash was right across from the fern ridge reservoir park. There was a wooden cross way going over the tracks to let cars drive over into a nature preserve. Unfortunately, there was a spike that hadn't been hammered all the way down and it was just tall enough to catch on our front guide support beam. We flew forward and impaled ourselves on the bike, Kyle more so than I. 

Of course, i wanted to stop and take pictures of the accident, but at this point we were next to a highway and could have been spotted easily. We had to get out of there fast. So we pulled the bike off the tracks and into the nature preserve. The timing worked out well for lunch.

When we returned to the rail bike we took a closer look at the damage. Fortunately it was just the front guide support that had been damaged. It had bent in at a weak spot, moving the guide wheels out of alignment. We took it apart and wedged it into a nearby metal gate, using its own length to leverage it back into alignment. Having been bent twice we knew that the metal was compromised, it was already pretty rusty to begin with. Kyle, being an eagle scout, and generally just a really resourceful person, said we should splint it. Made good sense to me. We had brought along a large crescent wrench thinking we'd need it for its intended purpose, but it proved to be far more useful as a splint.

Not too much further past our first crash/lunch-break spot was a bridge going over a small waterway. As we pulled up we could see there were a handful of people jumping off the bridge into the water, a family, and some kayakers. They were all pretty excited to see us. They had lots of questions.

By this time in the afternoon, the foggy mist had burned off and it was just plain hot, especially riding our heavy home-made locomotive. Jumping in the water was a much welcomed respite.

Before we left i asked one of the kids to take a picture of us. For the history books.

We continued our westward journey, almost in Veneta at this point. As we forged ahead i wore out pretty hard, i had clearly passed my peak and was needing to stop with greater frequency. Kyle naturally has about 3 times more energy than the average person, and about 5 times more than I, he picked up the slack as best he could. My drop in effort clearly started to wear on him, but he's a good sport and tried not to let it show. It was probably for the best that we ended up crashing again.

We came up to our second road crossing, though this time no drop arms. We were far enough out on the tracks that those kinds of things had been shut down til further notice. At this point we were in Veneta. We hopped of the bike, waiting for a break in traffic, too tired to care who saw us, and walked it across at our first chance. As we made it onto the other side a group of weather-beaten drunks cheered us on. They were sitting at the edge of the green along side the tracks, 50 feet from a Dari-Mart, drinking conspicuously in the summer sun. We continued on, but two merging tracks confused our high-tech guide system- the left side popped up onto the tracks, we skidded askew and then ate it again. This time the front guide support beam was toast, it broke entirely, the only thing holding it together being the wrench. Kyle, once more, employed his eagle scout abilities and found a perfectly shaped branch to reinforce it from behind. It was rideable, but just barely.

Another crash called for another food break. We pulled the bike of the tracks and wandered back toward the Dari-Mart. The drunks were happy to see us again, they really liked our bike and seemed to think us comrades, something akin to railway renegades from another era. I vaguely remember them talking about some of their own foolishly hazardous escapades, being none too impressed, and mostly just wanting water.

We stocked up on trail mix and fruit at the Dari-Mart. Kyle surreptitiously filled the water jug outside of a local pizza joint. We wandered around "downtown" Veneta for a bit. It was clear they had put a fair amount of money into making the place look nice, and whereas there were maybe one or two interesting businesses, it struck me as unwarranted optimism for an unlikely renaissance. We did run into a lady painting a mural on the outside of a hardware store, that was fun.

Our crash convinced us it was time to turn around. We weren't sure if the bike was even going to make it all the way home. But it was our only choice. Exhausted, we pedaled back, mostly in silence, well, i mean we didn't talk, it was still really fucking loud. 

We had one final crash before returning home. Merging tracks, guides ride up, bike goes off. The bike flipped up and flung us forward this time, face first toward the track. Arms outstretched, neither one of us suffered any injury to head or face, which was lucky. 

The rest of our efforts home were put toward crash prevention and front-wheel-falling-off mitigation. The bike in its frail state was significantly more susceptible to derailment; things that we barreled over the first time we had to take with great caution on the return trip. And, of course, any time we had to switch tracks the stupid front end would fall entirely off. Neither Kyle or I had the patience for this anymore, our communication had broken down almost entirely to frustrated grunts. 

We did make it back eventually, miraculously, to Eugene. We were sunburnt and worn-out and it was worth it. It was an awesome adventure.

the shopping cart bicycle

My first job in Eugene happened to be at a grocery store. (For those of you in the area its the old Oasis- now Capella). Good job, great people.

My friend Gretchen from aprovecho had, a while back, suggested the idea of a shopping cart bicycle. Lo and behold, i now had access to shopping carts. The owner of Capella, Mark Lew, was very generous in letting me take one of the old ones- from the oasis days.

I checked in with Phranque about the design, and he recommended a few different styles. Ultimately, i went with this design he found on the internet:

I decided to go with this one because phranque just happened to have a kids tandem that could be adapted to this design. Less work, i thought, than building something entirely from the ground up. Whereas that may be true, i failed to take into account inspiration. And although comical, this design is hardly inspiring.

In hindsight, i wish i had gone with another design. Something more like one of these:

Alas, i built neither of these styles. Instead, i started tearing apart the kids tandem* and building up the front to be adult sized.

*So the reason that a kid sized tandem was ideal to make the design in the very top picture is because it was long enough and already had a small wheel in the back. The small wheel is necessary to get the center of gravity as low as possible. The other two designs, you'll notice, have the basket sitting below the tops of the wheels. This is ideal- it makes balancing a heavy load a whole lot easier.

The first order of business was to enlarge the front end of the bike. I swapped out forks to use a 27" wheel, welded on a higher seat post, and extended the bottom bracket downward.

When i put a chain onto the bike it hung so low that it almost touched the ground. To keep that from happening i welded in a support brace to hold an additional derailleur in the middle of the chain.

The chain also needed some support near the rear wheel. It was dragging across the chainstay and cutting a groove into it. So i welded on a long bolt, put a tube as a sleeve loosely over it and then put on a washer and nut to keep it all on.

Then i welded the basket on and set up all of the cabling. The cabling, in particular, was a real pain in the ass. There were no cables even close to long enough so i had get creative and clamp multiple cables together. Worked pretty well actually.

At this point the bike was functionally done. So i rode it back to the co-op. And then i found Silas, one of the several feral indigo children of the co-op, and offered him a ride. He was all about it.  

Later, i took the bike back to the shop and dismantled it for painting. This thing was so absurd that it really needed an equally absurd paint job to match. Neon stripes.

 

So i got a little further than whats pictured above, and then i burned out. The painting process was incredibly frustrating and wasteful (see pictures below). It took entirely too long to get to the point where it was. And, ultimately, i just wasn't excited enough about the design to power through it and get it done. So, sadly, the G-Money Grocery Hauler never made it past getting painted. I left it in the shop with Phranque, offering it up to anyone who wanted to do something with it. Hopefully someone does.

gringa

When i moved to eugene i landed at an urban ecovillage called the East Blair Housing Co-op. Pretty awesome place- community decision making, lots of colorful houses, beautiful permaculture landscape, a sweet tree house and a lot of rad people.

 When i first moved in i stayed briefly with a woman named Tamara and her three hilarious children, Eric, Lola and Lincoln. Tamara had a book on her coffee table that inspired my first weird bike. The book is called Gringa.

 

I thought the bike was totally badass, brilliantly simple. Since i had moved into Eugene and was hanging out with Phranque pretty regularly, he agreed to let me come be part of the shop, keys and all. There were plenty of old bikes to choose from, but i asked Phranque if there were any that he recommended in particular. He pointed me towards a gray mountain bike for the frame, and a funky bmx for the fork and front wheel. 

 

I started by pulling everything apart, which is always the easy boring part. The fun challenging part was building the super long steerer tube. I don't remember how i determined the length, i think it was along the lines of "uh, yeah, that looks right." I went over to Coyote Steel, a metal supplier a couple blocks away, and bought a several foot long piece of 1" o.d. (outer diameter) mild steel tubing. 

To extend the the steerer tube of the fork i cut the tube in half. Phranque then showed me how to jig it up so that i could weld it and have it be as straight as possible. This involved using a long straight piece of angle iron and several clamps. The angle iron served as the rigid backing to maintain straightness, and the clamps to hold it in place while the welds cooled (one of the tricks with welding is that once you heat up metal it will shrink towards the place it was heated, so if you don't have it in a jig it will bend and warp in ways you don't want it to).

I also had to weld on a sleeve in order to provide a flat surface for the crown race to sit on top of. This is normally occurs where the steerer tube intersects with the fork legs, however, i wasn't going to cut that far down and try to weld the legs back on. Making a sleeve was a much easier solution.

Once everything was all welded together i reassembled the bike with its new, ridiculously long, fork. For an added bonus i put on some sweet ape hangers (a style of handle bars).

It came out great. I was so excited to ride it, i didn't even wait til it had brakes. Maybe not the greatest idea, but oh well.

Riding this thing around town was awesome, everyone loved it, especially dudes. People stopped me all the time to talk about it. And eventually i saw some other homemade choppers popping up in a similar style. I hope for them, though, that they figured out the structural engineering a little better than i did. I saw it coming, had plenty of warnings from friends- the design wasn't built to last. With all of that leverage on the headset it eventually buckled and broke. Popping wheelies didn't help.

It was so much fun to ride, i definitely want to build another one, designed better, of course.

Here's a video it ended up in:

Oh, and it turns out that my friend Tamara is actually friends with the author. She took a picture of the bicycle, which i named after her book, and sent it to the author. Apparently, she said it was as much of a compliment as a five star review.

eugene bike church

During the winter of  '10 a friend of mine from Aprovecho, Eleva, moved out to Eugene. I went and visited her one weekend and she took me with her to this anarchist bike shop warehouse, called the bike church.

 

The bike church was, at that time, part of the free school. (Free school being a loose affiliation of people with skills willing to teach those skills to others for free, or donation). There were two teachers at the church, Morgan and Phranque. Morgan lived in the church, in her biodiesel greyhound bus. That's really the first thing that i remember about the place- this gigantic bus taking up most of the warehouse, everything else just kind of existing awkwardly around it.

 They had some pretty interesting things going on- tall bikes, side by side tandems, and other strange bike hacks. Eleva and i hung out for a couple hours, rode the tall bikes and the tandems. I was in love.

So when my year long residency at Apro wrapped up, i knew that some interesting things awaited in Eugene. And they did, I joined the bike church, became housemates with Phranque and started building some silly bikes.

More soon.

new header

So the old graphic needed an update, particularly since it gives the impression that the blog is all about Guatemala. Guatemala is still the lions share of the content, but i'm in the states now. Building bicycles at Bike Friday in fact!

The new look is something i threw together fast. Any thoughts on it? Improvements? I want to make something better and would love some input.

peak moment

While I was still down in Guatemala I got in touch with Peak Moment, a television show covering peak oil issues, and told them about what i was up to. We kept in touch, and late in the summer of '10 they came out to Aprovecho and filmed several shows.

If you do any research on peak oil, you'll eventually end up watching an episode of Peak Moment, and for good reason- they do some really excellent programing on local self-reliance and creative responses to peak oil and climate change.

It was nice finally meeting Janaia and Robyn, and it was great to film a show with them. Here it is:

While they were at Aprovecho they filmed several more episodes, so keep an eye out for those as they may be showing up soon. And be sure to check out Peak Moment's youtube channel, there's a lot of great information out there.