Abandoned Railroad E-Bike Camping Is The Next Great American Adventure

With the advent of hobbyist-grade 3D printers and water jet cutters, we now truly live in a world where if you dream it, you can do it. Absurdist YouTube engineer Matt Spears is back at it again with the kind of project vehicle you never knew you needed until he built one. Adapting a decommissioned US Postal Service last-mile delivery e-bike into a pedal-powered rail cart required little more than installing new axles and strapping the front tire of the e-bike to another set of rail cart wheels. It's not the most elegant solution, with the nose of the thing sitting in the air like it's Carolina Squattin', but it's a functional rail e-bike camper, and that's cool as heck. 

If the United States is going to continue to drag its feet catching up with the rest of the world on high-speed rail, while constantly decommissioning thousands of miles of once thriving rail transport, we might as well use this already built infrastructure for something. The tracks have already been laid, so we might as well go exploring the world around us using these pre-existing rail tracks. And above and beyond that, time out in nature is time well spent, and touching grass also comes with fresh air and exercise. Americans could use more of both.

The bike, even with a big box on the back, it pretty lightweight, and can be picked up and maneuvered around, which is nice for turning the bike around when you decide you want to head back home. It also makes for a pretty good chassis, because it can run along the tracks well without too much effort. This is a nice low-impact cardio workout, and theoretically you can camp out of it along the rail somewhere. 

Matt gets the bike moving along the rails pretty well for a couple of miles, but quickly encounters a downed tree that would take way too much effort to cut through in order to keep riding. In future installments, I might suggest he bring along a small electric chainsaw in addition to his handsaw. That would make quick work of a thicker tree, without adding too much weight to his rig. 

There are definitely some things that could be improved with this rail riding camper rig. I might suggest finding a new way to mount the front axle so the nose of the bike isn't pointed skyward. It would be pretty impractical and uncomfortable to try to sleep in that box camper at such an inclined angle. The rear axle appears to need either a thicker piece of bar stock, or more chassis reinforcement to avoid bending as well. In the future he might want to be a little more careful with his turnarounds, or make a more robust chain and sprocket for the bike, as he bent both and had to push the bike back after a short ways. 

It's a valiant first effort for a bike project that I think has loads of potential. Now I kind of want to head off to a government surplus auction to pick up a USPS e-bike of my own. Oh, and a word of warning, if you want to ride the rails on your own, make sure you check to see if it's still in use before you go.