Re: rail biking

I can say all legal and technical issues aside... absolutely awesome.

One of the things I've always loved about biking is like art and
artists it can be a be a vehicle for reclamation or "re-exploration".

This reminds me a lot of buildering (bouldering on man made
structures), urban spelunking, and urban freeriding.

The opportunities are there to colonize and to ride those spaces that
have been either forgotten about, neglected or perhaps never even been
traveled.

As an artist friend of mine puts it "the spaces between".

I've seen a great deal of ingenuity on the forefront of spaces like
bikepacking and ultralight touring, especially cross pollination and
mixing of sports with touring like packrafting, skiing, snowshoeing,
backpacking, etc.  A favorite is the "lost coast expedition",
http://lostcoastbike.blogspot.com/ ... which has now been repeated for
a third time using yet another varied multi-sport approach. (The first
time I think it was completed by backpacking / packraft.)

That said rail exploration is an area where the bike is uniquely suited.

I personally have been looking at opportunities such as using a
fatback snow bike to explore the extensive snowmobile networks here in
the Midwest.  And will almost certainly this year develop a harness
system so I can put my entire 30lb ultralight touring setup on my back
like a backpack to do some combined backpacking / biking on trails
here in the Michigan and the Midwest.  Once the gear gets light enough
and versatile enough traveling quickly through extremely varied
landscapes becomes a beautiful art.

Things that surprise me about these pictures.

1) I can't believe/comprehend how those bikes could track on rails
without perhaps riding them myself. I see that hunter cycles has built
a fairly solid and well toleranced alignment arm for the front of the
bike but I can't fathom how the bikes would be stable or be able to
ridden safely at any kind of real speed.

2) the technical skill and ingenuity of hunter cycles is pretty
amazing, the engineered armatures look both light and amazingly solid,
no doubt do his frame building skills.

3) the versatility of of the setups are amazing.  Words are lacking
when it comes to discussing the armatures because they're so original,
but the fact that the side arms can also be used as trailers for use
off the rail and the fact that the two bikes could be "mcgrubbered"
(authors words) to be ridden on the rails side by side is amazing.  I
half expect a picture of them fixed as sail masts for capitalizing on
wind energy.

The big questions I have are not about the technical issues though.

I'm wondering how long that rail has been abandoned and how rideable it is.

I'm trying to get my head around how one discovers and plans a route /
trip to take advantage of such lines. Surely most abandoned rail lines
have the rails removed and the right of ways are quickly dismantled?

I can imagine that after only one year or two years abandoned rail
might be so completely grown over as to not be pleasant to ride.

I'm also wondering how long it took the rails in question to
deteriorate to the state that it was completely washed out?

I have seen (since I've been riding a lot of rail trails in the
Appalachians this winter) where even if overgrown the core structures
for railroads such as bridges and tunnels have remained solid even 30
or 40 years after the rail lines were abandoned, but it otherwise
amazes me at just how fast nature reclaims railroads, roads and
buildings.

Peace,

-mike