'The quirky lovechild of a bicycle and train:' The railbike revolution is underway in Colorado (2024)

They were referred to as “velocipedes,” an early French term for bicycles. They were also called handcars, these people-powered transports that indeed looked very much like bikes atop the tracks in the 19th-century heyday of American railroading.

“They were used as maintenance vehicles,” says Robert Harte. “Instead of taking a whole steam engine out ... you could get out fast if you just had to go out a few miles.”

More Coloradans are doing just that in a curious, modern twist.

It’s not a maintenance job they have to do, but instead a leisurely spin on railways that have long sat silent.

Harte’s Revolution Rail Co. is rolling out a fourth season of railbike tours in southern Colorado. From an 1870s depot in South Fork, people will once again pedal along the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, following the namesake river through old ranchlands and forests overlooked by the San Juan Mountains for out-and-back trips covering as long as 12.5 miles.

Where trains once roamed between the San Luis Valley to silver-rich mines, now tourists pay to ride through the scenery atop contraptions of two to four seats. It’s a ride through history, Harte likes to think.

South Fork represents the western growth of Revolution Rail Co. Harte started the company in 2017 along the Saratoga and North Creek Railway in New York’s Adirondack Mountains and has since expanded to other parts of the East Coast.

“Revolution” seemed a fitting name.

“There’s the revolution of just a wheel going around,” Harte says. “But there’s also this new way of exploring train tracks, and it’s introducing a sustainable tourism model that keeps these railroads alive in a way.”

It was a similar inspiration for Jeff Rummer.

This will be the debut summer for Colorado Railbike Adventures, a vision of Rummer’s to return activity to the abandoned tracks on the plains that once fueled northern Colorado’s coal industry.

From his family’s home in Erie, Rummer learned those tracks of the Boulder Valley Railroad were some of the oldest in the state, going back to 1871.

“We’re sitting there going, ‘This is a really huge piece of Colorado history and Erie history, and it’s just wasting away under the grass,’” Rummer says. “Part of this is bringing that story back to life.”

Another part of railbiking, he says, is bringing attention and economic activity to Erie. “We love our little town,” he says. “It’s a really cool place with a lot of great people and great businesses, and for us to be a draw for that, it’s an honor and something we take very seriously.”

It’s a “funky” draw, he recognizes — those yellow-wheeled contraptions built by specialists in Colorado Springs and Leadville.

Rummer has described railbiking as “the quirky lovechild of a bicycle and train.” His research took him to 20-plus tourist operations on tracks around the country.

Harte helped start one of those in 2015 before returning to a career in classrooms. He taught U.S. history, which afforded him the chance to return to his boyhood passion: trains.

“I could always go back to the railroad as a huge jumping off point for how the country grew,” he says.

He could always run and bike, fitness being a passion of his adult years. He always thought of railbiking as blending these passions, lifestyle and history.

“I just couldn’t get the idea of railbiking out of my head,” Harte says. “So at night I would mess around in the garage, and I just started building my own railbike.”

He started with an aluminum “H” frame, lighter than the steel frames he knew to be manufactured in South Korea and Europe. For the wheels, he opted for a plastic poly blend, also lighter than the common steel wheels, which were also “way louder,” Harte says. “I wanted to have something quiet so that you could kinda connect to nature more.”

The Adirondacks provided nature. Harte got landowner permission to test- run his railbikes on that stretch of the Saratoga and North Creek Railway.

“Someone took a video of it, and the video went viral,” Harte says. “When that happened, that really took us to a different level.”

He went on to strike agreements on tracks in New Jersey and Kennebunkport, Maine. By 2021, he connected with the historical society that oversaw the old depot and track in South Fork.

Three years later, Harte says Revolution’s locations have served about 300,000 riders, including “thousands and thousands in Colorado.” South Fork is the fastest-growing location, he says.

“And you know, that really helps the local economy,” he adds. “We’re bringing jobs, bringing people to go eat at the restaurants, stay at the hotels. It’s like that multiplier.”

Rummer hopes the same for his similarly often-skipped town on the opposite side of the state. “There’s an old story about Erie being one of the forgotten Front Range towns,” he says.

Forgotten, too, can be the history, he says. As neighborhoods continue to march across the northern plains, Rummer likes to think railbiking can be that reminder of what came before.

He likes to think it can be that along railroads elsewhere in the state. “Hopefully we’re in conversations with other places to figure out where else we can bring Colorado Railbike Adventures,” he says.

Harte has seen the demand in South Fork. Along with being the fastest-growing of Revolution Rail Co.’s locations, South Fork also offers the longest of all tours. That’s to the delight of railbikers who travel around to tracks across the country.

Even still after that scenic ride of 12.5 miles, Harte hears it: “People have been asking to keep going further and further.”