Found this today at a flight museum (with a transit section) close to Milan
I have seen at least one person mod an ebike with an outrigger for exploring dead rail lines in the USA.
the weirdos they are long-lived in this species.
Several years ago on YouTube I was watching people rig up their own disused rail carts using battery drills, lawnmower engines and all sorts lol
i need to invent hover-rail
it would cause hardly any wear on the rails at all !
maglev?
That is one alternative…
…or, you could try the French design:
Why would you want to attach magnets to a billowy cushion of air much less how ?
And there are subtle differences between hovering and leving. I’m going with hover technology for now.
well, ackshtually you just said “hover-rail” not hovertrain 😏
Could you explain why you’re going with hovertrains instead of maglevs? Last I heard the former had difficulties with corners and were costlier than maglev.
France beat you to it:
I saw a video of somebody using these on an abandoned line in California a while back. Looks cool.
They are not too uncommon in some parts of the world. France, for example, has multiple abandoned sections of rail on which tourists can rent these.
It already got better than this: They’re called bicycles :D
This is still pretty cool though.
Metal on metal is way more efficient than rubber on road. Imagine how awesome it would be zooming along a dis-used rail line at 50 on a modern version of this.
It seems like for something as light weight as a bicycle, you could rig up something that would work on a single rail, allowing much more efficiency and bi-directional travel.
Balancing on a single rail is practically impossible. However a common design for rail bikes is to have a normal bike on 1 rail with a detachable outrigger for balancing on the other rail. https://i2.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/rail-bike-conversion.jpg?resize=1200%2C670&strip=all&ssl=1
I was thinking more of a clamp. But yea any kind of mechanism that allowed you to only utilize one rail, would probably not be very portable off the railway.
A single rail clamp would have a lot of friction because you need contact all the way around the wheel, increasing the surface area. The reason why regular train wheels are so efficient is because they’re balanced on top on a tiny surface area, using the clever tapered shape of the wheels to go around corners without jamming against the side of the wheel.
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